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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap. _ Copyright Eo, 

ShelllX-2:3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



J 



CARPENTER'S GEOGRAPHICAL READER 



SOUTH AMERICA 



BY 

FRANK G. CARPENTER 



>^^c 



NEW YORK ■:• CINaNNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



^ 



5.,- 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED 

Library of Cojsgregf^ 
Office of the 

fieglster of Copyrlghff^ 






48553 

Copyright, 1899, by 
Frank G. Carpenter. 



Carp. S. Am. 

E-P1 




SECOND COPVf 



PREFACE. 



In this book the children are taken by the author upon 
a personally conducted tour through the most character- 
istic parts of the South American continent. Leaving 
New York, they sail through the Atlantic Ocean and Carib- 
bean Sea to the Isthmus of Panama. Here they cross 
over to the Pacific, and travel along the west coast, visiting 
all the different countries and learning about their civiH- 
zation and industries. 

They cHmb the Andes; they explore the highlands of 
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and steam over Lake Titicaca. 
They travel extensively upon the great coast desert, visit 
the wheat and fruit lands of Chile, and then make their way 
about through the Strait of Magellan into the Atlantic. 

They go along the Atlantic coast, through Patagonia, 
into the pastures and pampas of Argentina, and sail on the 
Parana and Paraguay rivers for thousands of miles into 
the heart of the continent. 

Returning through the Rio de la Plata, they make their 
way along the coast of Brazil to the mouth of the Ama- 
zon. They explore the wilds of the great Amazon valley, 
and then go on into Venezuela to the Orinoco river, down 
which they sail into the Atlantic, and close their tour with 
travels in Dutch, French, and English Guiana. 

Among the striking features of the book are the pic- 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

tures of life and work among the people of the various 
countries. The children take journeys through the cities ; 
they see life in the villages, and spend days upon the farms, 
in. the factories, and in the mines, seeing all phases of life 
among the rich and the poor, the savage and the civilized. 

The great industries of South America have received 
especial attention. In the Andes the young readers go 
down into the mines and see how gold, silver, and tin are 
extracted from the earth. They explore the nitrate fields 
on the coast, see the great borax lakes of Bolivia, exam- 
ine the guano islands, and are carried out under the ocean 
into the subterranean coal mines of southern Chile. 

They learn about sheep raising during their travels in 
Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, and upon the pampas of 
Argentina they visit the greatest stock ranches of the world. 
They travel through the coffee plantations of Brazil, and 
spend some time in the rubber camps of the Amazon and 
in the cacao orchards of Venezuela and Ecuador. 

They learn much of the curious animals of the different 
zones, and see the wonders of nature in the flowers and 
trees of the tropics. 

The travels are in the shape of an imaginary tour made 
by the children themselves, with the author as a guide. 
The book will, it is believed, aid in putting flesh and 
blood on the bones of the geographies, and will give a 
living interest to geographical study. 

• The book has the merit of being written from original 
sources of information. It comprises the observations 
of the author gathered in a trip of more than twenty- 
five thousand miles along the routes herein described. 
Most of the descriptions were written on the ground, 
and a very large number of the photographs were made 
by the author especially for this book. 



CONTENTS. 



I. From New York to Panama 

II. The Isthmus of Panama 

III. Across Panama to the Pacific 

IV, The Republic of Colombia . 

V. The Land of the Equator . 

VI. The Great South American Desert 

VII. In Lima, the Capital of Peru 

VIII. Up the Andes .... 

IX. On the Roof of South America . 

X. Steamboating above the Clouds . ,-, . 

XI. Travels in Bolivia . . . 

XII. The Mineral Wealth of the Andes • 

XIII. On the Nitrate Desert and the Guano Islands 

XIV. Along the Coast to Valparaiso . 

XV. Across South America by Rail . 

XVI. Santiago, the Capital of Chile <. 

XVII. A Visit to a- Chilean Farm . 

XVIII. Southern Chile and the Araucanians- 

XIX. In the Coal Mines of Chile 

XX. In and about the Strait of Magellan 

XXI. At the End of the Continent 

XXII. In Argentina— Patagonia . 

XXIII. In Argentina— Life on the Pampas 
XXIV. In the Great Fruit and Bread Lands of South America 

7 



PAGE 

9 
i6 

24 
29 
38 
50 
58 
67 
72 
81 
87 
95 
100 
108 
115 
123 
130 

137 
144 

151 
159 
167 

174 
182 



8 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

XXV. In Buenos Aires 192 

XXVI. Uruguay — In Montevideo, the Paris of South America . 201 

XXVII. Up the Rio de la Plata System ., ... 208 

XXVIII. In Paraguay 218 

XXIX. Paraguay— A Trip into the Interior .... 226 

XXX. Paraguay — A Curious Tea— The Chaco and its Indians . 233 

XXXI. In Brazil— The Wilds of Matto Grosso . , .243 

XXXII. Southern Brazil 249 

XXXIII. In the Land of Coffee . 257 

XXXIV. Rio de Janeiro 267 

XXXV. More about Rio 274 

XXXVI. Bahia and the Diamond Mines 283 

XXXVII. Along the Coast of Brazil . . . ' . . .291 

XXXVIII. The Valley of the Amazon 299 

XXXIX. Para, the Metropolis of the Amazon . ' . . . 305 

XL. In the Land of Rubber 312 

XLI. A Trip on the Amazon . . . . . . . 320 

XLII. On the Orinoco and the Llanos . , . . . 327 

XLIII. Venezuela and its Capital ...... 334 

XLIV. In the Guianas 342 

Index 351 



LIST OF MAPS. 



South America 








Frontispiece 


Isthmus of Panama . 








18 


Colombia . 








. 


30 


Peru and Bolivia 










73 


Tierra del Fuego 










158 


Argentina and Chile 








V .. . . 


202 


Brazil 








. 


242 


Venezuela and Guiana 










343 



TRAVELS THROUGH 

SOUTH AMERICA. 



^^^c 



I. FROM NEW YORK TO PANAMA. 

IT is a great undertaking to explore a whole continent, but 
that is what I shall ask the boys and girls to do with 
me in this book. We shall travel together over all South 
America, to learn what kind of a country it is and what it 
has in it, and to see for ourselves just what is going on in 
every part of it. 

We shall first sail from New York to the Isthmus of 
Panama, and crossing that narrow neck of land, go through 
the Pacific Ocean along the west coast to the Strait of 
Magellan, stopping here and there, and making many trips 
far into the interior. We shall go through the strait about 
the southern end of Patagonia, and then travel along the 
east coast of the continent through the Atlantic to the 
mouth of the Amazon, journeying thousands of miles in- 
ward at different points, and exploring all the great rivers. 
From far up the Amazon we shall go north through the 
wilds into the lands along the Caribbean Sea, and thence 
take ship for New York. 

9 



lO 



ATLANTIC OCEAN. 



This will be a very long journey. South America is so 
large that we must travel much farther than the distance 
around the world if we would visit only its principal parts. 
It is a difficult trip. Much of it will be in the Andes 
Mountains, which are among the highest on earth, and in 
Argentina we shall travel over plains and pastures where 
for thousands of miles we shall not see a hill. 

We shall find all kinds of animals and, I might almost 
say, all kinds of men. There are curious Indians here and 
there over South America ; there are mixed races in most 
of the states; and there are numerous negroes, as well as 
several varieties of the Caucasian race. Many of the peo- 
ple have odd customs, and we shall find every thing strange. 

But our steamer, the Alliaufa, for the Isthmus of Pana- 
ma, is lying at its wharf in New York, ready to start. I 




" Our steamer is ready to start. 



VOYAGE TO PANAMA. II 

wonder if we are well prepared for the journey. Let us 
look carefully over our baggage and see. It will be hard 
to buy things in some of the countries, for we must remem- 
ber that but few South American cities have so good 
stores as we have. 

It is now winter. It is so cold in New York that we 
dare not go out on the street without heavy clothing. We 
shall be in the land of perpetual summer when we step 
from the steamer upon the Isthmus of Panama, and our 
overcoats and flannels will seem very hot on the equator. 
And still we cannot throw them away, for we shall need 
them in cold Patagonia and while we are climbing the 
snowy peaks of the Andes. No ; our first business is to 
lay in a good stock of all kinds of clothing. 

Another thing which each of us needs is a good saddle 
and bridle. Many of the journeys will be on donkeys and 
mules, and the saddles sold in South America are very 
uncomfortable. I think the boys should take guns, for we 
may have shots at alligators and jaguars, at tapirs, and 
perhaps at peccaries or wild hogs. 

We also need cameras and photographic supplies to 
bring back records of the things we see, in order to prove 
that the stories we tell are founded on truth. 

But stop a moment. I wonder if we all have our pass- 
ports. There are often revolutions in South America, 
and during such it is not the easiest thing in the world to 
keep one's head on one's shoulders or to keep out of prison. 
We must be able to prove that we are Americans, so that 
we can claim the protection and rights that our citizens 
have all over the world. , 

Passports are furnished for this purpose by the Secre- 
tary of State at Washington. Each passport is a piece of 
white paper about as large as a sheet of foolscap, certifying 




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12 



A Passport. 



VOYAGE TO PANAMA. 13 

that its owner is an American citizen. It has the coat of 
arms of the United States at the top, and at the bottom 
the big red seal of the State Department at Washington. 
Between the two there is a description of the person to 
whom the passport is given. It tells just how tall he is, 
the color of his eyes, hair, and face, whether his nose, chin, 
and mouth are big or little, and just how old he was when 
the passport was issued. It also bears his signature. The 
paper is signed by the Secretary of State, and it requests 
all people to permit the bearer, who is a citizen of the 
United States, safely and freely to pass, and in case of 
need to give him all lawful aid and protection. 

We find our passports all right, and are counting over 
our baggage when we are warned that it is time to be off. 
The ship has already finished loading its cargo, and we 
make our way in and out among the men who are wheel- 
ing on board the bags containing the South American 
mails. 

A moment later the bell rings. to notify all who are 
not going with us to leave. There are farewell kisses and 
hurried good-bys. The engines begin to throb, and as we 
wave our handkerchiefs to our friends on the wharf our 
boat moves slowly out into the East river and down by 
Staten Island through the harbor of New York. 

Within a short time the city has passed out of view, and 
as evening falls we stand at the stern of the steamer and 
watch the lights of Sandy Hook fade away into the dark- 
ness, realizing that we shall not see our native land for 
many months to come. 

It is about two thousand miles from New York to Colon^, 
on the Isthmus of Panama; but our ship does not go so 
fast as the big steamers of the Atlantic, and it takes a full 
week for our voyage. 



14 



ATLANTIC OCEAN. 



The first day out is cold and bracing, and we spend 
the time in learning our steamer. It is a ship of three 
thousand tons, about fifty feet wide and three hundred 
feet long. It flies the American flag. The sailors are 

from difi'erent parts of New 
England, and our captain is a 
Yankee from Maine. At high 
noon every day he makes an 
observation, telling by the sun 
just where we are, and a little 
later on we all rush to the cabin 
to learn how many miles we 
have gone in the twenty-four 
hours. 

At the close of the second 
day the air becomes warm. We 
are crossing the Gulf Stream, 
that mighty river of the Atlan- 
ticwhich is three thousand times 
as great as the Mississippi in 
volume. The water is now 
warmer than that of the ocean through which it is flow- 
ing. It warms the air like a furnace, and we can feel the 
difference as we pass out of it and travel along its eastern 
edge toward the Caribbean Sea. 

But why do we not keep in the stream and be warm all 
the way? 

You will easily see when you remember how hard it is 
to pull a boat against a strong current. The Gulf Stream, 
flows northward at the rate of three miles an hour, and we 
are going as fast as we can to the south. If we should 
keep in the stream we should have to steam against a three- 
mile current, and we should lose at least three miles an hour. 




At high noon he makes an 
observation." 



VOYAGE TO PANAMA. 1 5 

We find the weather much colder outside the stream. 
It is not long before it grows warmer, however, for we are 
sailing southward and shall soon be in the Caribbean Sea. 
It is already so pleasant that we can leave off our over- 
coats, and we walk the deck, scanning the wide expanse of 
blue water on all sides. 

But what is that away off to our right? It is httle 
more than a blue speck in the distance. 

That is one of the most famous islands in the world. 
It is San Salvador, upon which Columbus landed when he 
first discovered America. The sight that greets our eyes 
is the same that greeted his more than four hundred years 
ago. When he first stood upon San Salvador he thought 
it an island off the coast of Asia, and did not reahze that 
he had discovered a new world. San Salvador is one of 
the most fertile of the Bahamas. It produces fruits, 
grain, and roots in great abundance, and it is as rich to- 
day as it was when Columbus landed upon it. 

A little farther south we see a white Hghthouse stand- 
ing among a grove of palm trees, and the captain tells us 
we are looking at Bird Rock Island, another of the Baha- 
mas ; and still farther south the bleak and rocky coasts of 
eastern Cuba come into view, with the purple mountains of 
Haiti in plain sight on the opposite side of the ship. We 
sail between these two islands for hours, and then go out 
over the blue waters of the Caribbean. 

The sea is now like glass. The sun is quite hot at noon, 
but during the rest of the day the air is soft, warm, and 
-pleasant. It is like a June day in Ohio. We put on our 
thin linen clothes and enjoy our voyage over the tropical 
seas. 

We sail for two days with no land in sight. There are 
few ships, and the only moving things upon the waters are 



l6 COLOMBIA. 

the gulls which hover about us and the schools of flying 
fish which dart from wave to wave, one now and then 
jumping too high and lighting on our deck in its flight 

But listen. The captain calls out that we are approach- 
ing the Isthmus of Panama. We are coming near to that 
wonderful strip of earth and rock which ties North and 
South America together. 

We rush to the prow of the ship and look toward the 
west. At last a thin, hazy line of blue floats up out of the 
waters at the horizon. Now the blue deepens. It rises 
up in the form of low mountains, while little green islands 
bob out of the sea in front of our ship. 

Now we are still closer. See, there is a low city along 
the shore. It is surrounded by green trees and plants, 
and rising out of it and over it are tall palm trees with 
fanlike leaves moving to and fro in the breeze. That town 
is Colon, the city at the eastern end of the Panama Rail- 
road, where we are to land, and those trees are real cocoa- 
nut palms, which seem to be waving to us a welcome to the 
Isthmus of Panama. 

II. THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 

WE shall cross the Isthmus of Panama on a railroad in 
a very few hours. The first white man who went 
over took twenty-nine days, and his journey made him 
famous for all time as one of the world's great discoverers. 
It was only a few years after Columbus discovered 
America. Then no one knew that this land was an isth- 
mus. Most people supposed it to be a part of Asia. 
Expeditions were being made to learn just what the land 
contained, and among the explorers was a young Spaniard 



ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 1 7 

named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who came with a party 
to the Gulf of Darien, not far south of Colon. Here he 
founded a settlement and went out among the Indians 
trading for gold. 

One day when he was weighing some gold which he 
was about to buy, a young Indian chief struck the scales 
with his fist, scattering the precious metal upon the ground, 
and said : 

'* If this is what you prize so much that you are ready 
to leave home and risk your lives for it, I can tell you of 
a land where gold is as cheap as iron — where it is so com- 
mon that the people eat and drink out of vessels made 
of it." 

What the Indian said was true. He spoke of Peru, a 
country which was then rich in gold, and in which we 
shall travel by and by. 

His saying excited Balboa, and he questioned the chief, 
who told him that the land of gold lay to the westward 
over the mountains, where there was a sea so great that no 
one had ever come to its end. 

Balboa then decided to find out if this story were true, 
and on September i, 15 13, he started. It took him eleven 
days to cut his way through the thick forest to the top 
of the mountains, and then on the 25th of September, 
15 13, he saw a great sea to the south, which he called the 
South Sea, but which we call the Pacific Ocean. Four 
days later he cHmbed down the west slope, and with sword 
in hand rushed into the waters up to his waist, and claimed 
the great sea and all it contained for the King of Spain. 

The Isthmus of Panama is not large. The neck of an 
hourglass is not so narrow in comparison with the globes 
which it joins as this little neck of land with the conti- 
nents of North and South America above and below it. 



i8 



COLOMBIA. 



At its narrowest part, if it were level, we could walk across 
it in a day, while to cross North America from New York 
to San Francisco requires six days and nights on a fast 
railroad train, and in South America to make our way 
from the Atlantic up the Amazon as far as we could go, 
and thence to the Pacific by land, would take more than 
two months. 

Yes, the isthmus is very narrow, but it forms a great 
wall against the commerce of the world. See those boxes 

and bales of goods 
which are being tak- 
en out of the hold 
of our steamer. They 
are putting them on 
the cars which will 
carry them across to 
the city of Panama, 
on the Pacific. There 
they will again be 
loaded upon ships 
going north to San 
Francisco or south 
to Ecuador, Peru, 
and Chile. Those 
men who are work- 
ing must be paid, 
and the railroad 
charges high prices 
for freight. Indeed, 
the transfer of goods across the isthmus costs so much that 
it is often cheaper to send them from New York to San 
Francisco on ships clear around South America, although 
the distance is eight thousand miles greater. 




ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 19 

What a fine thing it would be if we had a canal cut 
across the isthmus wide enough for the biggest ships to 
sail through! Then our Pacific coast, Hawaii, and the 
Philippines would be thousands of miles nearer by ship to 
our Atlantic coast ; and Europe and Asia, so far as com- 
merce is concerned, would be much closer together. 

Such canals have been planned ever since Balboa 
showed that the two great oceans at this place are so close 
to each other. There are now two great undertakings to 
cut through the land from one ocean to the other. One is 
the Nicaragua Canal across Central America by way of the 
large Lake of Nicaragua and the river San Juan, and the 
other is the canal which is being dug by the French 
from Colon, where we now are, to the Bay of Panama, on 
the Pacific. 

We shall see much of the Panama Canal as we cross on 
the railroad. Vast sums have been spent upon it, but it 
is still far from completion. We shall see what a great 
job it is to cut through the land, although at this point the 
isthmus is so narrow that one of our fastest trains might 
cross from ocean to ocean in an hour. 

The chief obstacle is the series of great mountain chains 
which runs north and south along the west side of our 
hemisphere from Alaska to the Strait of Magellan. We 
knew of it in the Rockies and the Andes. It exists also 
at the Isthmus of Panama, although it sinks so low at this 
place that the greatest peaks are not half a mile high. 
Indeed, the pass through which the canal is to go is only 
two and one half times as high as the Washington Monu- 
ment. Still, the mountains are masses of rock, and it takes 
a long time, by blasting and drilling and dredging, to cut 
them down so as to make a ditch wide enough and deep 
enough for ships to pass through. 

CARP. S. AM. — 2 



20 



COLOMBIA. 



Another difficulty in making the canal is in the great 
rains. The isthmus is one of the rainiest parts of the 
world, and during some of the year the streams and rivers 
flowing down the mountains become raging torrents. The 
Cha^gres river, which crosses the line of the canal, some- 
times rises in one rainy night as high as a four-story house, 
so that it will take a great dam to hold back its waters. 
Indeed, it will cost so much to make the canal that many 
people wonder if it will be completed. 

But we have some time yet before the train starts, and 
we can take a run through Colon. We cross the track 
of the Panama Railroad, which runs through the town, and 
visit the entrance to the canal, where we see great dredges 
and numerous small boats. The dredges are idle and 
covered with rust. There is a vast amount of machinery 




The dredges are idle." 



ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 



21 



going to ruin, for the work in this part of the canal has 
been given up for the time. 

We learn that Colon was largely made by the canal peo- 
ple, and that the most of the men we see on the streets 
came here to work upon it. Among them are negroes 
from Jamaica who address us in English, and brown-faced 
Colombians who speak nothing but Spanish. The Co- 
lombians are the descendants of the Spaniards who came 
here centuries ago. Some of them are pure whites, and 
others are of the mixed race of Spaniards and Indians. 

Colon has also a sprinkling of French, Americans, and 
English. It has many Chinese, the first of whom were 
brought here by the thousands years ago to work on the 




Front Street, Colon. 



railroad. They did not get along well, and so many of them 
died that one of the stations on the railroad is called Mata- 
chin'., which, freely translated, means "dead Chinamen." 
What a queer town Colon is ! We say this again and 



22 



COLOMBIA. 



again as we walk through its streets. Many of the houses 
are empty, and nearly all are going to ruin. When the 
canal was started, thousands of people were employed 
upon it, and it was thought that Colon would be a great 
city. The finest part of it was made for the officers of the 
canal, and was called, after Columbus, the town of Chris- 
tophe Colomb. 

We take carriages and drive through this section. Its 
wide streets are lined with cocoa palm trees, each of 
which has a bushel or so of green cocoanuts hanging close 




"We take carriages and drive through this section." 

to its trunk where the leaves jut out. The cocoanuts are 
as big as the heads of the half-naked negro babies who 
are playing under the trees, and we think that a commo- 
tion would arise if one should drop down among them. 

We see more cocoanut trees as we drive through other 
parts of Colon. They are found almost everywhere on 



ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 23 

the isthmus. The most of them are wild, but there are 
also cocoanut plantations where we can learn just how the 
trees grow. They are so easy to raise that we almost 
wish we could stop and start a grove of our own. 

The cocoanut trees are first sprouted by placing a lot 
of the nuts on top of the ground, a few inches apart. 
After a while each nut sends out a sprout from one of the 
little eyes at its end. The sprout grows up into the air, 
and at the same time a root shoots out of its base down 
into the ground. 

Within a few months the sprout has grown as high as 
a table. The sprout and nut are now broken off from 
the root and set out where the tree is to stand. The nut 
is buried about six inches deep in the ground, the rest 
of the sprout remaining above. The earth is pressed 
tightly down about the sprout, and the planting is done. 

Cocoanut trees are set out at about the same distance 
apart as the trees of our peach orchards. They grow 
rapidly, and at seven years begin to bear nuts. The fruit 
ripens all the year round, and we see blossoms and nuts 
on the same tree. 

The nuts are not picked from the trees, but they drop 
when they are ripe. The men go daily from tree to tree 
to gather the nuts. Each nut has a thick green husk 
upon it. This is torn off, and the nuts then look as we 
see them in our stores, and are ready for shipment. 

They are loading cocoanuts on the steamer when we get 
back to the wharves. The captain will take a shipload to 
New York, and tells us that they will be sold there by the 
thousand for two or three cents apiece. 



24 



COLOMBIA. 



III. ACROSS PANAMA TO THE PACIFIC. 



OUR train for Panama is ready to start. We buy our 
tickets of an American station agent, and later on we 
notice that the conductors and other railroad officials are 
Americans. The Panama Railroad was built by Ameri- 
cans shortly after gold was discovered in California. It 
has been very profitable, although it has cost a great deal 
of money and thousands of lives. Indeed, so many men 
died of fever while working upon it that it is said there 
was more than one death for every tie in the track. 

The cars are much like our cars at home. Each seat 
has its window, and we have a good view of the country as 
the train whirls us along through tropical wonders. 

Now we go by a banana plantation. See how the wide 




Banana Peddlers. 



ACROSS PANAMA. 



25 



green leaves of the plants extend up from the ground 
higher than the head of a man. They are nearly as high 
as the top of the cars, and great bunches of green bananas 
bend down among them, almost touching the ground. 

Now we pass orange trees loaded with fruit, and there 
is a tree filled with green and ripe lemons. There are 
many forest trees, the names of which we do not know. 
Some of the trees are covered with orchids, and some are 
masses of other beautiful flowers. Among them are fern 
trees, and also bamboos of many varieties, which wave 
their tall, green, feathery branches in the breeze made by 
the train as we pass. 

There are twenty different varieties of palms on the 
isthmus, some of which are of wonderful value. That 
small, fat, bunchy tree, with the leaves sticking out on all 
sides, is the ivory palm. See those prickly green balls, as 
big as your head, which grow 
close to its trunk at the top. In 
those balls are the nuts which 
form the vegetable ivory of com- 
merce. Each nut is somewhat 
like a chestnut, but about five 
times as big. That train which 
is passing us now is probably 
carrying thousands of ivory nuts 
to Colon, whence they will be 
shipped to New York, and there 
made into buttons, combs, and 
other such things. 

But see, there is another 
strange palm. I mean that one 
at your left, with the green shoots at the top. That is 
the cabbage palm. Its head looks like a cabbage, and if you 




Sago Palm. 



26 



COLOMBIA. 



should cook it you would find that it tastes much the same. 
On the hill farther back there are palms which furnish the 
sago we cook in puddings and soups, and now and then 
we pass what the natives call the wine palm, because from 
its sap they can make a sweet drink which will intoxicate 
like wine. 

But we are coming into the mountains. We are slowly 
climbing the hills. There are woods all about us. The 
forests in the distance look more like the woodlands of 
our country than those of the tropics. The trees are 
closer together, and they are so bound about with vines 

that we could not make our 
way through them without 
chopping it out with an ax. 

We see but few birds, as they 
are frightened off by the noise 
of the train; but a short dis- 
tance back from the railroad 
there are bright-colored par- 
rots and great scarlet-breasted 
toucans with bills four inches 
long. There are yellow birds 
about as big as a robin, which 
whistle like mocking birds, and 
orioles whose beautifully woven 
nests hang down like bags from 
the trees. 

There are also many wild 
animals. See that monkey 
which is grinning at us out of the branches of that tree as 
we pass. There are monkeys of all sizes on the isthmus, 
as well as ant-eaters, jaguars, and wild hogs. 

There are snakes, large and small, from the poisonous 




#■■■1 






Cocoa Palms and Cocoanut. 



ACROSS PANAMA. 



27 



viper to the great boa constrictor. There are plenty of 
insects. We must be careful where we walk, lest we step 
on a tarantula, a scorpion, or a centiped. 

Notice the telegraph poles. They are made of iron. 
This is because of the ants, some of which eat wood. 
These ants sometimes travel in armies, and they will con^ 
sume a pine telegraph pole in a night. 

The mosquitoes are worse than ours of New Jersey, and 
I warn you to beware of a little insect called the chigoe, 
or jigger, which attacks the bare toes just under the nail. 
When it bites you it will not hurt more than the prick oi 
a needle, and the bite will make only a little red spot on 
your toe. As it bites, however, it lays its eggs in the 
little hole it makes in the flesh. The eggs are so small 
that you can hardly see them, but if you do not soon dig 
them out with a needle they will hatch into worms, which 
will cause you 
great pain and 
probably the 
loss of your 
toe. 

The isthmus 
has many vari- 
eties of Hzards. 
We see them 

crawling out 

r J i.1. Iguana Lizard. 

irom under the ^ 

ties on the railroad, and we may have a chance to eat them 

when asked out to dine. The flesh of one variety of lizard 

is as tender as a spring chicken. It is sold in the Panama 

markets. This is the iguana lizard. It is from three to six feet 

in length, and its eggs are of the size of a marble. The eggs 

are yellow and shriveled, but are by no means unpalatable. 




28 



COLOMBIA. 



But here we are on the other side of the mountains. 
We go quickly down to the lowlands, and end our journey 
in Panama, with the Pacific Ocean before us. 

Panama has about twenty-five thousand people. It is 
one of the most- picturesque cities of the hemisphere. Its 
houses are built like those of old Spain, with galleries 




Wharves, Panama. 



hanging out, so that we are shaded from the sun as we 
walk through the streets. The streets go up hill and 
down. They wind in and out around a great bay which 
is guarded from the sea by green islands. 

There are many good stores, and several hotels. We 
visit the wharves and see the great business that is done in 
transferring goods from one ocean to the other. We spend 
some time on the bay looking at the ships which have 



ACROSS PANAMA. 



29 




come from different parts of the world. They are an- 
chored far out from the shore, at the edge of the islands, 
on account of the tides, which are here very strong. We 
learn that one is just about to sail southward along the 
coast of Colombia, and upon it we take passage. 



3>»^C 



IV. THE REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA. 



WE are sailing southward this morning upon the 
mighty Pacific. Were it not for the slight breeze 
of the northeast trade winds it would be stifling, and as it 
is the sea seems to steam. 



30 



COLOMBIA. 



Longitude BO West from Grcciiw 



Come with me to the side of the ship and look out to 
the west. Notice how the blue waves stretch on and on 
until they lose themselves in the sky. We are on the 

greatest of the 
oceans. That wa- 
ter extends west- 
ward for ten thou- 
sand miles until it 
wraps itself around 
the Philippine Is- 
lands and washes 
the east coast of 
Asia. 

How bright the 
sun is, and how 
dazzling! It darts 
its rays down, and 
Colombia. millions of dia- 

monds are dancing upon the waves under our eyes. We 
wink and blink as we look. The reflected rays of the sun 
are here as bright as its direct rays in July at our homes. 
Come now to the other side of the vessel and look at 
the shadows. The water below us is of an indigo blue, 
which seems to grow lighter as our eyes travel over it to 
the green hills of the shore. 

What is that cackling and crowing and quacking we 
hear? Can that be .the baa of a lamb? Was not that 
the moo of a cow? We rub our eyes to see if we are not 
dreaming. This voyage of ours must be a mistake, and 
we are surely back near one of the farmyards in the 
country at home. 

No, it is not a mistake. The noise of the fowls comes 
from those two-storied coops on the deck. You can see 




GENERAL VIEW. 3 I 

the chickens and geese poking their heads through the 
slats. The bleating and mooing is from sheep and cattle 
which are kept in stalls two floors below. They are car- 
ried to furnish the meat for our tables. It is so warm 
here on the southern Pacific that fresh meat will soon 
spoil. 

What a noise the creatures make! We are awakened 
by them every morning, and hardly know where we are 
until the cabin boy brings in our breakfast. It consists of 
a small cup of coffee and one or two slices of bread, and 
protest as we may, we cannot have more until eleven 
o'clock. This is the custom throughout South America. 
Between eleven and one they have a second breakfast, 
which is much like our dinner, and their dinner is at about 
six in the evening. We grumble at first, but soon find it 
is as pleasant as our way of eating at home. 

But here we are saiHng into one of the ports of Colom- 
bia. There are palm trees and bamboos on the coast, and 
the dense vegetation is much like that of the isthmus. 
There is a town a little back from the water. It is com- 
posed of thatched huts and of one-story white buildings 
covered with plaster and roofed with red tiles. There are 
some little saiKng vessels at anchor, and many small boats 
in which dark-skinned men are rowing-out to the steamer. 
We are now in the Bay of Buenaventura (boo-a-na-ven- 
too'ra), and from here we shall make a long tour through 
Colombia. 

The country is so vast that we cannot expect to visit it 
all. Colombia is ten times as large as the state of New 
York. It is as long from north to south as the distance 
from St. Paul to New Orleans, and its coast line on the 
Caribbean Sea is longer than the distance from New York 
to Chicago. 



32 COLOMBIA. 

It is a land of mountains and plains. The Andes run 
through it in three high ranges, and between them are 
some of the most fertile river valleys of all South America. 
The mountains contain many rich mines of silver and gold. 
There are men from all parts of the world digging the 
precious stuff out of the hills, and there are some places 
in which diamonds are found mixed with the gold. 
Colombia has produced more than six hundred million 
dollars' worth of gold. 

We make our way over the coast range of the Andes 
from Buenaventura, traveling for the first twenty-five miles 
upon a little narrow gauge railroad, and then taking mules. 
The animals carry us on their backs up one steep trail 
after another, and bring us at last into a region said to be 
one of the most healthful and beautiful on earth. This is 
the valley of the Cauca river. It is covered with planta- 
tions of sugar cane, coffee, and cacao. There are great 
fields of bananas and large orange orchards. There are 

many lemons, and we make lem- 
onade of the fruit which we our- 
selves pull from the trees. 

We stay for a day with a 
farmer to see his cacao planta- 
tion. The cacao tree bears the 
fruit from the seeds of which our 
chocolate is made. The planter 
has thousands of trees, and upon 
our mules we ride with him 
^^^° through one cacao orchard after 

another. How. beautiful everything is! The trees look 
like lilac bushes, except that they are from fifteen to thirty 
feet high. They are ragged and gnarly. Their leaves are 
of a bright green, and the fruit is so large that if it lay on 




GENERAL VIEW. 



33 



the ground you might think it a little squash or a very 
big ripe cucumber. It is of a bright lemon color, streaked 
with red. It grows close to the bark of the trunk and 
branches, and not on the ends of twigs like apples or pears. 

At our request the planter gives us a specimen. We 
chop it in two with a knife. It has a thick skin, and inside 
this a white pulp in which are imbedded about thirty 
dark-brown seeds much like large hma beans. From these 
seeds are made the chocolate and cocoa of commerce. 

The fruit is gathered when ripe, and the seeds are 
washed out of the pulp. They are dried in the sun and 
shipped to factories in different parts of the world. In 
the factories they are ground, and from their meal, after 
several processes which take out some of the oil, the pure 
chocolate is made. From the seed hulls, in much the 
same way, cocoa is made. 

In another part of the plantation we learn how the trees 




Village in Colombia. 



34 



COLOMBIA. 



are grown. The seeds are first planted in hills about 
fifteen feet apart, three seeds being put in each hill. They 
soon sprout up, and at first look not unHke small orange 
trees. They are cultivated, and the weeds are kept down. 
At three or four years they begin to produce fruit, and 
continue to yield for thirty years and more. 

We see many cacao orchards in other parts of Colombia, 
and we learn that raising this product forms one of the 
great South American industries. We shall find other 
orchards in Ecuador and in the lands farther east. Indeed, 
a great deal of the chocolate which is drunk in the United 
States and Europe comes from this part of the world. 

We are delighted with the people of the Cauca valley. 
They are noted for their hospitality, and are so kind that 




Capitol, Bogota. 



GENERAL VIEW. 



35 



their country has been called '' The Land of the Gentle 
Yes," because the people hate to say no to any request. 
They are largely composed of the mixed race of Spaniards 
and Indians. They are very simple in their tastes, their 
chief business being farming and fruit raising. 

We take boats and sail for days down the Cauca river, 
coming at last into the Magdalena river, where we find 
steamers bound for Honda, the port from which Bogota', 
the capital, is reached. 

Honda is as far from the mouth of the Magdalena as 
Pittsburg is from New York, but the river extends south- 
ward many miles far- 
ther. It is a vast 
stream more than a 
thousand miles long, 
forming the great in- 
ternal highway of 
Colombia. We sail 
through the lowlands, 
winding this way 
and that across the 
stream, avoiding the 
sand bars. We pass 
many river steamers loaded with freight, and cargo boats 
with negroes and Indians, who stand upon them and push 
them onward with poles which they thrust down into the 
bed of the river. 

Farther north the scenery grows grander. We are now 
near high mountains, and at Honda, a small river town, 
where we land, we take mules and climb for two days up 
the steep roads which lead to the great plain upon which 
Bogota is situated. ». 

Bogota is one of the high cities of the world. It is 




Cargo Boat. 



36 COLOMBIA. 

almost nine thousand feet above the sea, or much higher 
than Denver or Mexico city. As we rise we find the air 
cooler. On the Magdalena the heat was intense, the very 
water was warm, and at Honda the stones were almost too 
hot to touch. At Bogota we are in a temperate climate, 
fresh and cool in the daytime, but so chilly at night that 
when we go outside the hotel we wear overcoats. 

We spend some time in Bogota, studying the city and 
people. It has about one hundred thousand inhabitants, 
the rnost of whom are of the mixed Spanish and Indian 
race. 

Bogota is a Spanish-built town. Nearly all the houses 
are of one story, close to the street, with iron bars over 
their windows. They are painted in the brightest of 
colors, and nearly all have roofs of red tiles. 

The best part of the city is about the Plaza Bolivar 
(bo-leVar), a beautiful park with gardens of flowers and 
tropical trees. On one side of the plaza is the capitol, or 
government building; and on another, with arcades before 
them, are stores containing goods from all parts of the 
world. We see many people out shopping. The ladies are 
dressed in black, with black shawls over their heads, but 
the men of the better classes are dressed like our men at 
home. 

We are surprised to find that Bogota has street cars, 
public libraries, and schools. It has telephones and elec- 
tric lights, and it has daily newspapers printed in Spanish. 
In it are the houses of Congress and the homes and offices 
of the president and other officials who govern the Repub- 
lic of Colombia. There are many soldiers, and we are 
awakened each morning by the trumpeters who are calling 
the troops out to drill. 

The strangest things to us, however, are the Indians and 



GENERAL VIEW 



37 



the donkeys. The Indians dress in cotton. The men 
have on white shirts and trousers, and sometimes also a 
poncho, or blanket, which they wear over their shoulders, 



, ^ 




Indian Women. 



sticking their heads through a hole in the center. The 
women wear dark clothes, and nearly all have on straw- 
hats like those our boys wear in the summer. 

The donkeys are the beasts of burden of the city. 
They take the place of carts and wagons. Bread, vege- 
tables, and fruit are carried about from house to house 
upon them, and at the market scores of these little ani- 
mals stand and wait while their masters sell the produce 
they have brought in from the country. 

We see more donkeys and Indians as we go back to the 

CARP. S. AM.— 3 



38 



ECUADOR. 



seacoast over the mountains. Our journey is made upon 
mules, and it takes a long time for us to climb the two 

ranges of the Andes 
between Bogota and 
the Pacific. 

At last, however, we 
reach Buenaventura, 
and are glad to be again 
in our cabins, hearing 
the throb, throb, throb 
of the huge engine as 
it forces the vessel 
through the ocean. 
We pass the southern 
boundary of Colom- 
bia, and then coast for 
a time along northern 
Ecuador. As we cross 
the equator the sun 
grows hotter and hot- 
ter, and we feel almost roasting as we enter the great Gulf 
of Guayaquil (gwi-a kel') and sail up the Guayas river to 
Guayaquil, the chief seaport of Ecuador. 



1 


s. 


■ 


1 


m^^jK 




rW'^ 


9 -^BT "ioteSSl',^ "^H 


, 


'''i ^^^w 


^^^H»M^^^^ jn 


m ' ' 




^IK J 




^^Sffl|^^K , 


'^^^mP^fWBSBa 




^_ "^^^^^^^ 


-^2^ 





Mat Makers. 



V. THE LAND OF THE EQUATOR. 

ECUADOR means equator, and we are now in one of 
the lands of the equator. Ecuador lies on both sides 
of that central line of the earth. It is of the shape of a 
fan, whose handle extends almost to Brazil, and whose 
scalloped rim is fringed with the ocean spray. 



LAND OF THE EQUATOR. 39 

The exact size of Ecuador is unsettled. According to 
the boundaries which the natives claim, it is larger than 
Texas; but if Peru and Colombia are allowed what they 
assert belongs to them it will be but little larger than 
Colorado. 

It is a curious country, made up of lowlands and high- 
lands. The parts of it along the coast and near the east 
boundary are low and tropical, and the remainder is a 
land of the clouds. It comprises some of the highest of 
the Andes, with mighty plateaus where the chmate is 
cool and temperate, and where in some parts it is perpet- 
ual spring. 

We are now in the most tropical part of the country. 
Guayaquil never needs a furnace, and heating stoves are 
unknown. Look at the city as it lies there on the banks 
of the river. There is not a chimney rising above any of 
the houses. There is not a stovepipe in the city, and the 
weather is so warm that most of the buildings are made 
without windows, mere holes in th^ walls serving for light 
and air. 

The boatmen who have rowed out to the ship to take 
us on shore are half naked, and as we land at the wharf we 
see half-naked babies playing about near their mothers, 
who sit there peddling oranges, pineapples, bananas, and 
all sorts of tropical fruits. 

How the sun beats down upon us as we stand in the 
street, and what a vile smell comes up from the gutters! 
Guayaquil is very unhealthful ; it often has yellow fever; 
and we must be careful to keep out of the sun. Let us 
go farther over into the business part of the city. Now 
we are walking under arcades by one great store after 
another. It is like passing through a museum or a bazaar 
of East India. The stores are all open. The front walls 



40 



ECUADOR. 




Street Scene, Guayaquil. 



have been folded back or taken away for the day, and the 
goods are piled upon the counters and stacked upon the 
floors. 

What a queer throng is this that moves along in the 
shade! There are women dressed in black, with black 
shawls over their heads. There are Indian girls from the 
interior, in bright-colored gowns and straw hats, and there 
are dark-faced Indian peons, or workmen, who trot along 
with great bags of cacao and other things on their backs. 

What a lot of donkeys there are in the street ! There 
is one loaded with lumber. Three long boards have been 
strapped to each of his sides, and he clears the whole street 
when his master turns him about. There is another donkey 



LAND OF THE EQUATOR. 



41 



with two large wooden boxes slung over his back. That 
is the bread wagon of Guayaquil, and that boy who is 
dragging him on- 
ward is probably 
thesonofthebaker. 
There are other 
donkeys carrying 
vegetables in pan- 
niers, and we see 
that donkeys and 
mules here take the 
places of our huck- 
ster carts, carriages, 
and drays. 

But what is the 
matter with that 




■ The bread wagon of Guayaquil. 



donkey's legs? He is actually wearing trousers. There 
is also a band of cotton cloth on the under part of his 
body. There are other donkeys dressed the same way. 
We ask why this is, and are told that the flies and gnats 
are so bad in Guayaquil that the donkeys have to wear 
waistbands and trousers. 

Let us take a walk through the streets. They are lined 
with workmen, who are laboring at their trades on the 
sidewalks, and Indian women, who comb their own and 
their children's hair as they wait for their customers. 

We stop a moment before a house which is just being 
built. The carpenters are nailing bamboo laths on the 
framework of the building, and spreading upon them a 
thin coat of plaster. The part of the house they have 
finished looks as though it were made of brick or stone 
covered with stucco, when in fact it is so thin that you 
could ram a hole through it with a rail. See how the 



42 ECUADOR. 

beams and rafters are made in sections and spliced. The 
houses are so constructed on account of the earth- 
quakes which are felt here every few weeks. Heavy- 
buildings will fall if the earth shakes very much, but these 
light structures thus put together sway to and fro, but do 
not come down. 

Guayaquil is quite a business center. It is one of the 
best ports on the west coast of South America. It Hes 
about sixty miles up the Guayas river, where the stream 
is a mile wide, and so deep that it furnishes a safe harbor 
for great ocean steamers. The river is filled with ship- 
ping, and there are many dugouts and cargo boats which 
have brought goods — cacao, cane sugar, and ivory nuts — 
from the interior of Ecuador for shipment abroad. 

There are also little steamers which take us up the 
Guayas river almost to the foot of the Andes. We leave 
at night, and awake to find ourselves floating in and out 
among houses built high upon piles surrounded by water. 
It is the rainy season of Ecuador, and the low coast lands 
are flooded. The people of this region are now living in 
the second stories of their houses. We see them going 
from one hut to another in canoes. There are market- 
men paddling about, and there is a group of children in 
that little boat being paddled to school. 

The town at which we now are is Bodegas (bo-da'gas). 
It is the head of navigation of the Guayas river. Only a 
small part of it is on the mainland, and this part is half 
flooded, so that the street crossings are bridged with logs, 
and the people have to hug the walls and step upon blocks 
in getting from one store to another along the side streets. 

Many of the houses are far out in the river. The 
smaller ones have only one room, made of poles covered 
with palm leaves, and reached by ladders from the water. 



LAND OF THE EQUATOR 



43 




" Many of the houses are far out in the river." 



Let us take a canoe and visit one of them. The owner 
makes us welcome, and we squat down on a block on the 
floor, sitting rather gingerly upon it for fear the floor may 
break through and drop us down into the water. See, it 
is made of bamboo canes. There are so many cracks 
that the women do not need to sweep, for the dirt falls 
through into the river, or to the ground during the dry 
season. 

Notice that clay pot resting over the little fire in that 
box over there. That is the cook stove of the family. 
These people use charcoal for fuel. They live largely 
upon sweet potatoes or yams, plantains or large bananas, 
and a potatolike tuber called the yucca. They are fond 
of rice, and eat a great deal of beef dried in the sun. 

Leaving Bodegas, we start out for our trip over the 
Andes. We ride for miles in canoes through the flooded 
lands, among the treetops of the tropical forest. Now 
we pass alligators, which swim lazily off into the bushes. 
Now monkeys make faces at us out of the branches, and 



44 ECUADOR. 

now a bright-colored parrot shrieks out as we go on our 
way. We take a shot now and then at an alhgator, but 
fail to hit the beast in a vulnerable spot. 

We pass many Indians in canoes and flatboats, carrying 
their wares down to Bodegas. We ride by cacao planta- 
tions, and finally shoot out of the woods into the open, 
with the mighty Andes rising above us. 

Now we have left the river and are on our mules, climb- 
ing the mountains. The road is so narrow in places that 
we have to go single file, and so steep now and then that 
we fear we shall slip off behind. Now we ford a stream, 
throwing our legs high on the donkey's neck to keep our 
feet out of the water, and now we go along narrow ledges, 
shuddering to think how we should be dashed to pieces if 
the little animals should slip in the mud. The roads grow 
worse farther up, and we heartily agree with the natives 
of the country who say that their roads are rather for 
birds than for men. 

As we ride higher still the air becomes fresher and 
colder. We are now out of the region of coffee and cacao, 
and in one of less luxurious vegetation. We have left the 
tropical forests, and at last reach a point so far above the 
sea that there are no trees at all. 

We shiver under the blankets in the rude huts where 
we stay overnight, and find our accommodations very un- 
comfortable. Our beds are on wooden platforms. We 
are tormented with insects, and at one place the chickens, 
cats, and dogs run in and out of the rooms where we are 
trying to sleep. 

Farther on we come to a plain higher up in the air than 
Pikes Peak. It is covered with sand, and the cold wind 
almost blows us from our mules as we attempt to ride over 
it. This is the Arenal, the pass of the Andes through 



LAND OF THE EQUATOR. 



45 




Village in the Andes. 

which we reach the high central valley which forms the 
chief part of Ecuador. 

Now we have gone through the pass and are on our 
way up through the valley toward Quito. We are almost 
two miles above the sea, with some of the highest of the 
Andes about us. Over there is Chimborazo, its snowy 
peak kissing the clouds more than four miles above Guaya- 
quil ; and on each side of us, extending up and down the 
valley as far as our eyes can reach, are great mountain 
peaks, many of which are three or four miles in height. 

The great valley of Ecuador extends through the coun- 
try from north to south, with these mighty mountains on 
each side of it. Some of the mountains are active volca- 
noes. We see the vapor rising from them as we ride 
onward. There are frequent earthquakes in this region, 
and the houses are built to withstand them. 



46 ECUADOR. 

The high valley of Ecuador is a rich farming region. 
We ride through fields of potatoes, barley, and wheat, 

passing orchards and gar- 
dens, and green clover 
fields in which cattle are 
feeding. We go from 
one small town to an- 
other until we come to 
the little city of Ambato, 
where we get the stage 
for Quito. In this we 
go on the gallop all day 
long, changing our mules 
now and then, until at 
last we reach the capital 
of Ecuador. 

We are now in the 
highest capital city of 
the world. Quito is 
more than a thousand 
feet higher than Mount 
Saint Bernard, the 
highest point in Europe 
upon which men can live 
throughout the whole 
year, and the place where 
the famous Saint Bernard 
Climbing the Andes. dogs are kept to hunt for 

men lost in the snow. 

On Saint Bernard there is often ice all the year round. 

We find no ice at Quito. The air is as warm as that of 

May in our northern States, and the people tell us that 

their climate is perpetual spring. The great height so tem- 




LAND OF THE EQUATOR. 



47 




/himborazo. 



pers the heat rays of the sun as to make them just right, 
although the city is almost on the equator. We enjoy 
the clear sky and the fresh air from the great mountains 
about, and learn to prepare for the showers which come 
regularly during about two hours every afternoon. ^ 

Quito is an odd city. It has fifty thousand people. 
The streets are laid out at right angles. They are so nar- 
row that there is room for Httle more than foot passen- 
gers. Most of the people walk or ride on mules and 
horses, and almost all carrying of goods through the city 
is upon donkeys or mules. 

The houses of Quito are of one or two stories, made of 
stone or bricks covered with stucco, and roofed with red 
tiles. A large part of the town is given up to convents 
and churches, and we see priests, clad in white and in black 
gowns, going about everywhere. 



48 



ECUADOR. 



There are many women dressed in black, with black 
shawls on their heads, going to and fro, and crowds of queer 
Indians who have come in from the country. The Indians 
have on bright-colored costumes, each tribe having a style 
of its own. 

Ecuador has a great many Indians. More than two 
thirds of the population, it is said, are of the red race. The 
majority of the Indians are semicivilized. They have 
small farms, or work for the whites and mixed race of 
Spaniards and Indians. These people are the descendants 
of those ruled by the Incas at the time the Spaniards first 
came. They had approached nearer to civilization than 
the Indians of the lowlands, and had covered this valley 
between the ranges of the Andes with their cities and vil- 
lages. 

One of the largest cities was Quito, a much greater town 
then than it is now. In it Atahualpa (a-ta-hwarpa), the 
Inca monarch, had a palace whose roof was covered with 

gold, and there were many other 
fine houses. 

The Spaniards under Pizarro 
conquered Atahualpa and made 
the Indians their slaves. Other 
Spaniards came afterwards ; some 
of them married with the Indians, 
and the descendants of the Span- 
iards and of the Spaniards and 
Indians form the ruling classes in 
Ecuador to-day. 

The pure Indians are still httle 

more than the slaves of the whites. 

'^ -'^-- They till the soil. They carry 

Uncivilized Indians. boxes of goods on their backs up 




LAND OF THE EQUATOR. 



49 




Human Head, Dried. 



and down the mountains, and do all kinds of hard labor 

for small pay. They are not thrifty, and do not seem to 

care that they are in debt to their masters, 

who can therefore force them to work. 

They seem to have no ambition whatever. 

If one of them has a little brick or stone 

hut, a suit or two of cotton clothes, and a 

little rice and meat, with enough money 

to enable him to get drunk now and then, 

he considers himself very well off. 

Not all the Indians in Ecuador are civ- 
ilized. Some whom we see in Quito have 
very hard faces. They have come on long journeys from 
the eastern part of the country, bringing skins and other 
things from the wilds to the markets for sale. Among 
them are Indians who have a horrible 
practice of curing the heads of the ene- 
mies they kill. They cut off the head 
and, having removed the bones, fill the 
skin with hot pebbles to dry it. As it 
shrinks they keep pressing it inward on 
all sides so carefully that it does not lose 
its shape, but dries up to the size of a 
man's fist, keeping the same features it 
had when in life. Such heads are some- 
times baked in the sand, and when so 
treated they will last for years. They 
are grewsome objects, and when an In- 
dian takes us aside and offers to sell us 
one, which he pulls from under his blan- 
ket, we turn away in disgust. 
There is a university in Quito, and in our trips through 
the country we find here and there a pubhc school. We 




Water Carrier. 



50 PERU. 

can always tell where they are, for the children study 
out loud, often making such a din that they can be 
heard a long distance. We learn, however, that only a 
small portion of the people can read, and that the majority 
of the children do not attend school. This condition will 
probably be bettered, for although Ecuador is one of the 
most backward of the South American countries, it is 
slowly improving. 

A railroad has been planned from the coast up the 
Andes to Quito. A part of it is already built, and the 
day may come when this temperate valley, with its rich 
farming lands, will be connected with the seaport by rail. 

At present the only way to and from Guayaquil is by 
mule, and we must travel back in the same way we came. 



3>€^< 



VI. THE GREAT SOUTH AMERICAN 
DESERT. 



w 



E have left Ecuador and are now in the coast lands 
' V of Peru. We are in the midst of the great South 
American desert, which extends from Ecuador two thou- 
sand miles south along the coast of Peru and Chile. As 
far as we can see to the north and south there is nothing 
but sand, sand, sand. On the east the thirsty foothills of 
the Andes rise and lose themselves in gray rocky moun- 
tains, which, piled one above another, end at last in per- 
petual snow. On the west are the sparkling waters of 
the Pacific, casting their silvery spray upon the beach. 
The air is cool and dry, but the sand is so dazzling under 
the rays of the sun that we shield our eyes with smoked 
spectacles to keep out the glare. 



GREAT DESERT. 



51 



In the coast lands of Ecuador the soil was black and 
moist, and the tropical vegetation so thick that we had to 
chop our way a foot at a time to get through it. Here 
we gallop on our horses for miles without seeing a tree, a 
flower, or a blade of grass. 

Now we pass queerly shaped hills which seem to be in 
motion, and which really are moving toward the north. 
These are the traveling sand dunes of Peru. They are of 
the shape of a half-moon and are of different sizes, some 
so small that they could be put into a schoolroom, and 
others so large that they contain many hundreds of tons of 
this traveHng sand. 










Traveling Sand Dunes. 

But how can a hill travel? Come to one of the sand 
mounds and see. The coast winds, which here blow 
almost always toward the north, roll the little grains on 
the south side of the pile over one another, so that they 
travel up the outside of the half-moon and roll down on 



52 PERU. 

the inside, keeping the hill of the same shape, but slowly 
moving it onward. 

The traveling sands cover up everything they meet. 
They hide the bridle paths, which are the only roads of 
the desert, and for this reason we dare not go without a 
guide, who directs our course by the stars at night and 
tells us where we are by the winds during the day. 

Now we see the skull of a traveler who has been lost 
and has died here, and now and then a flock of vultures 
picking at the bones of animals which have perished of 
thirst in the desert ; now a mighty condor, the biggest bird 
that flies, circles high in the air above us, making a mov- 
ing shadow on the plain ; but for most of the time there is 
nothing but sand and rock and sea. 

Is not this a wonderful region ? Yes ; but it is easy to 
see that it cannot be otherwise when we think just where 
it is. First, let us remember that the atmosphere is the 
clothing of the earth, and that old Mother Earth works well 
only when her clothes are periodically wet. We also know 
that the mountains are the great clothes wringers of 
nature. They squeeze the water out of the air which 
comes against them, and by the differences in temperature 
cause it to fall upon the land. 

Now, the chief winds which sweep over the South 
American continent come from the east. They start 
from the hot shores of Africa across the warm regions of 
the South Atlantic. They pump themselves full of water 
as they cross the ocean, so that when they reach the coast 
of Brazil they are well loaded. As they go over the land 
they are somewhat cooled, and drop some of their burden 
in the form of rain, feeding the great rivers of eastern South 
America, and covering the land with tropical verdure. 

They drop more and more water as they climb up the 



GREAT DESERT. 



53 



eastern slopes of the Andes, so that when they have 
reached the top almost all has been squeezed out, and 
what is left falls there in snow. These winds then sweep 
on along the Pacific. They are cold, but so dry that they 
have not a drop left for the coast. The result is a desert 
upon which rain seldom falls. 

And are there no oases in this great desert ? Yes ; here 
and there, at wide distances apart, we find little rivers 
made by the melting snows of the Andes. There are in 
the whole two thousand miles of sand about forty such 
streams, and along them are the only places where people 
live. It is in these snow-water valleys that Lima, the 
capital of Peru, and other quite large cities are located, 
and here are some of the best farm lands of Peru. The 
soil of the desert is rich, and if water can be got to it 
it will produce almost any kind of crops. We ride out of 
the sands into irrigated 
fields, and are surprised 
to see the rich planta- 
tions of sugar cane, rice, 
tobacco, and cotton 
which grow here, with 
nothing but sand all 
about them. 

We come upon vine- 
yards, in which deli- 
cious grapes hang from 
the vines, and we slake 
our thirst with oranges 
which we pick from the 
trees. There are no 
better fruit lands any- 
where than the irrigated 

CARP. S. AM. — 4. 




Papaw Tree. 



54 PERU. 

valleys of this sandy region. Bananas, oranges, limes, and 
lemons grow side by side with peaches and pears, and 
there are delicious cherries, plums, dates, and figs. There 
are watermelons and muskmelons, guavas and mangoes, 
and also papaws and alligator pears. The papaw is a 
fruit as large as a muskmelon and grows on a tree, and 
the alligator pear, which is not so large as our pears at 
home, has a flesh that tastes like fresh butter, and is eaten 
with salt. We find fruit for sale in every town, and for 
a very few cents we can buy all we can eat. 

The farms are divided into small fields, fenced with 
thick walls of mud as high as your waist, and are covered 
with a network of ditches to water the crops. 

In the north, in the Piura valley, there are rich fields of 
cotton, much of the cotton wool being red or brown in- 
stead of white like ours. Peru raises fine cotton. If the 
plants are allowed to grow they become trees and produce 
small crops of cotton for ten years. The cotton plant 
blooms throughout most of the year, and we see buds, blos- 
soms, and cotton wool on the same tree at the same time. 
The best of the cotton is grown on plants only one or two 
years old. It is more like wool than ordinary cotton, and 
is used by the manufacturers of hats, stockings, and un- 
derclothes to mix with wool, as it renders the articles 
less liable to shrink. 

There are many sugar estates in the valleys farther 
south. Sugar cane is one of the chief crops of Peru. The 
cane is much like our Indian corn. It is planted in rows, 
and comes up so luxuriantly that the fields in the distance 
seem a mass of beautiful green. Some of the plantations 
are large and well worked. Many of the rich farmers use 
steam plows and harrows, and the cane is hauled from the 
fields to the sugar mills upon little railroads. 



GREAT DESERT. 



55 



Most of the farming, however, is done in a small way. 
The fields are cultivated with oxen yoked to the plows 
by their horns. They do Httle more than scratch the 
ground as they drag the plow over it. 

The larger farms are owned by the rich whites or by peo- 
ple of the mixed race of Spaniards and Indians. Those 
who do the work are the Indians, who, from their lack of 
ambition, and from the laws which make those in debt work 
for their creditors, are little more than the slaves of the 




Peons in Ponchos and Rebosas. 

whites. The peons, as these people are often called, 
receive very low wages, but seem to be perfectly satisfied 
with their lot. They are very ignorant, and but few know 
how to read. 

There is a group of them now at work in that field. 



56 PERU. • 

They are as brown as our Indians, although they do not 
look at all savage. Both women and men wear straw 
hats. The men have on leather sandals, but the women 
and children are barefooted. They dress in that way all 
the year round, except when it is cold and on Sundays 
and feast days. Then the men wear ponchos over their 
shoulders, and the women have rebosas draped about their 
shoulders and heads. 

We shall see ponchos and rebosas nearly everywhere on 
the west coast of the continent. The poncho is the over- 
coat and dress coat of the native man. It is merely a 
bright-colored blanket as large as a bed blanket, with a 
hole in the middle. You stick your head through the 
hole and allow the folds to come down over your shoul- 
ders. It looks quite picturesque, and it is both warm and 
comfortable. The rebosa is a long black shawl large 
enoueh to cover the shoulders and at the same time to be 

o 

wrapped around the head. 

But let us enter the hut of one of the peons and learn 
how they live. The hut is made of cane, and we can see 
out on all sides through the cracks in the walls. The 
floor is the ground, and the roof is of reeds, for it is needed 
only to keep out the sun, there being no danger of rain 
on the desert. The house has only one room, which is 
not so large as many a room in our houses at home. 

Where is the furniture? It looks as if the people had 
moved, for there is not much to be seen. There in the 
corner is a wooden platform as high as your knee. That 
is the sleeping place for the father and mother. The 
children sleep on the floor. There are no mattresses, no 
blankets, and no quilts. Each peon wears at night the same 
clothing he has on during the day, the little ones huddling 
together to keep warm when the nights are cold. 



GREAT DESERT. 57 

Look at the opposite corner. See those two stones 
placed just wide enough apart to allow that earthen pot to 
rest on them. That is the cooking stove for the family. 
In preparing the meals a fire will be placed under it, and 
thus the stew of goat's meat and rice, the most common 
food, will be cooked. The house has neither \rindows nor 
chimneys, and, with the exception of that rude box over 
there, no furniture at all. This Indian has a few chickens 
and goats. You can see them now outside the hut. At 
night he will bring them indoors, and animals and family 
will all rest together. 

We shall find such Indians over all Peru, although their 
houses and clothes will be warmer in the cold lands of the 
mountains. They are of the same race as the Indians we 
saw in the highlands of Ecuador, and we can hardly real- 
ize that they once owned the whole country and that they 
were more civilized in some ways than their descendants 
are to-day. We shall see the ruins of their large cities 
and villages, and discover evidences that they once farmed 
a vast territory which is now nothing but desert and waste. 
They knew how to irrigate the soil. They even cultivated 
the hillsides of the Andes. There are still terraces high 
up in the mountains which they cut out and built up with 
earth to raise crops. 

These Indians were a very rich people, and their rulers 
really did eat and drink from dishes of gold and silver, just 
as the Indian chief told Balboa. Their Spanish conquerors 
took out of one of their temples, it is said, as much gold as 
forty-two horses could haul at one time, and about twice 
as much silver. The silver nails of another temple weighed 
twenty-two thousand ounces, and there was so much more 
silver that when the horses of the invaders needed new 
shoes they were shod with this precious white metal. 



58 PERU. 

The leader of the Spaniards was named Pizarro. He 
was a cruel man, and acted dishonestly with the Indians 
and with the Inca king, their rider. After he had got 
possession of the king by inviting him to take supper 
with him in his fortress, he closed the gates and killed 
the king's attendants. He then fought the Indian army, 
which was thus without a commander, and conquered it. 
He kept the king in prison, but told him he would release 
him if his subjects would fill the room in which he was 
imprisoned with gold from the floor to a mark on the 
wall as high up as a man could reach. The king sent 
this word out over the land by messengers. A vast 
amount of gold was brought, and then Pizarro, instead of 
allowing the king to go free, had him condemned to death 
and cruelly killed. 

The Spaniards soon became masters of the whole coun- 
try. For centuries after this time they treated the Indians 
with the greatest cruelty. They made slaves of them, 
forcing them to work in the mines. They used them so 
badly that many died, so that to-day Peru, with both 
white people and Indians, has not so many inhabitants as 
it had when the Spaniards first came. 



3>@<C 



VII. IN LIMA, THE CAPITAL OF PERU. 

LET us chmb to the roof of our hotel and take a bird's- 
j eye view of the Peruvian capital before we begin to 
explore it. We are in a vast field of flat roofs, above 
which, here and there, rise the massive towers of great 
churches. At the back are the bleak foothills of the 
Andes, gray and forbidding. There are white clouds 



LIMA. 



59 



rushing over their sides, and the hills rise one above the 
other until they lose themselves in the dark, smoky sky. 
This morning the tops of the Andes are hidden. On 




At the back are the bleak foothills of the Andes." 



bright days their snowy summits, glistening in the sun- 
light, shine like masses of silver high above Lima. 

Turn your eyes again to the city. See that rushing 
stream which flows through it. That is the Rimac (re'- 
mac) river, which has come from the tops of the Andes 
to w^ater this beautiful valley, whose green fields stretch 
away beyond the houses to the right and left. 

It is this river that makes Lima possible. Without it 
all would be desert. It waters the large plantations of 
sugar, cotton, and other rich crops which extend from 



6o PERU. 

here six miles to the east, where the river flows into the 
sea. 

With a glass we can see the Pacific. That town on the 
coast is Callao (cal-la^o), the seaport of the capital and the 
chief port of Peru, and that train which is rushing down 
through the green fields is carrying passengers and freight 
from Lima to the steamers. 

What queer roofs these are all about us! They are 
more like little gardens than the coverings of houses. 
Please step more lightly, and do not stamp your feet as 
you walk to and fro. The roof is trembling under us, and 
with a httle effort we could push our way through. The 
roof is made of bamboo poles, with earth spread upon them. 
Were it not for the plaster, the dust would sift through 
into the rooms. It is so with the most of the other houses 
about us, some being covered with canes, upon which mat- 
ting is spread, and upon that a layer of earth, sand, or ashes. 

Is not this a strange way to build houses? You would 
think all would melt through if it rains. Yes, so it would, 
but we must not forget where we are. We are in the great 
desert region of western South America, where it seldom 
rains from one year's end to the other. There are prob- 
ably not a dozen umbrellas in all these houses below us, 
and none of the people need waterproofs or rubber shoes. 
The people can always depend on dry weather. 

The houses of Lima are constructed of mud, because 
this is the cheapest of building materials. The city, not- 
withstanding, has a substantial appearance. It seems at 
first to be made of brick and stone. The mud walls of 
some of its buildings look like marble ; others are painted 
to imitate granite, and others of bright colors seem to be 
made of brick covered with plaster. Most of them are in 
reality nothing but mud, being made of sun-dried brick. 



LIMA. 



6l 



We are surprised at the extent of some of the houses. 
They are very large. They are usually of one or two 
stories. In the two-story buildings only the first story is 
made of sun-dried brick, the second being a combination 
of mud and bamboo canes. 

From the roof we can see the shape of the houses. 
Each is constructed in the form of a hollow square, with a 
little court or garden in the center. About the court the 
people sit at night, this being their favorite lounging place. 
Many of the windows open on the courts, but much of the 
light comes from the roofs. Little dormer windows are 
built up for this purpose from nearly every one of the 
houses. The dormers look like chicken coops, and it is 
indeed hard to tell which are the roof windows and which 
are the real chicken coops. 

Yes, I mean chicken coops which contain chickens. 




" From the roof we can see the shape of the houses. 



62 



PERU. 



Don't you see the coops on the roofs all about us? On 
that building just over the way the hens are putting their 
heads out through the slats, and just beyond is a coop in 
which a rooster is crowing. Thousands of chickens are 
raised on the tops of the houses of Lima. Chickens are 
hatched, grow up, and themselves lay eggs, and are finally 
killed for the kitchens below. It is said, indeed, that some 
people in Lima keep cows and goats on their roofs, but 
there are none in sight from where we now stand. 

But let us go down and take a walk through the city. 
The streets are narrow. They cross one another at right 
angles, with parks or plazas cut out here and there. The 




i-sl^^ 



Each house has a Httle court in the center. 



business streets have awnings out over the sidewalks, and 
there are many balconies or porches which jut out, so that 
we are protected from the rays of the sun. It is but a 



LIMA. 



63 



few steps from our hotel to the chief plaza or square, on 
one side of which is the great Lima cathedral. 

This building is one of the finest churches on the South 
American continent. It is older than any church in our 
country, and although it is made of sun-dried brick, it has 
cost millions of dollars. We enter it and take a look at 
the skeleton of the treacherous Pizarro, which is preserved 
here in a coffin of glass, and then go out and cross to the 
opposite side of the square, where is the capitol of Peru. 

The country is a republic, and it is in this long, low, 
two-story building that Congress sits and the president 
has his offices. There are soldiers at all the entrances, 
and we see that the ruler of Peru is far more carefully 
guarded than our president. Elections are not so fair here 
as in the United 
States, and when 
one party is defeat- 
ed it often brings 
about a revolution. 
The soldiers of the 
defeated party at- 
tempt to drive out 
the president, and if 
they can do so they 
take charge of the 
government until 
another election is 
held. 

But suppose we 
go shopping. It is 
now about four in 
the afternoon, and 
for the next hour "The business streets have awnings." 




64 PERU. 

the streets will be filled with well-dressed people, some 
chatting together, and others going from store to store 
buying goods. 

The business hours of South American cities are from 
seven in the morning until eleven, and from one until six 
in the afternoon. Between eleven and one most of the 
stores are closed. The merchants go to their breakfasts; 
for the people like to rest during the heat of the day. 

Lima has many fine stores. They have no windows, 
but the doors are so made that the fronts can be opened, 
and as we walk through the streets we seem to be passing 
through a museum with goods of all kinds piled upon the 
floors. 

What queerly dressed women we meet everywhere ! 
They are clad in black, and they look more like nuns than 
like our own mothers and sisters out walking or shopping 
at home. Peruvian women do not wear bonnets. Instead, 
they have fine black cloths draped about their heads and 
pinned fast at the back of the neck, so that only the face 
shows. This is the dress the ladies wear on the streets. 
It is contrary to custom for a woman to go into church 
with anything else on her head, and if one should attempt 
to enter wearing a bonnet she would be touched with a 
stick by the sexton and told to uncover her head. The 
women of the upper classes when at home dress much as 
we do, and are quite as fond of gay clothes. 

The men wear clothes similar to ours. They have on 
tall hats and kid gloves, and nearly every one carries a 
cane. See how they lift their hats, smile, and shake 
hands when they meet, and how they smile and tip their 
hats when they part. The Peruvians are very polite, and 
especially cordial to strangers. One of them will walk a 
block to show us our way, and if we admire anything he 



LIMA. 



65 



has he will at once offer it to us as a gift. We must not 
accept such gifts, however, for they are made merely as 
a matter of form. 

During a recent trip in South America I was offered all 
sorts of things, from diamond rings to poodle dogs and 
fast horses. One day a rich Peruvian told me that his 
palace was mine. I felt quite rich for a moment, but 
when I remembered that the palace was worth a fortune, 
I knew he could not be in earnest, and politely refused. 

But let us leave the stores and walk through the city. 
The streets are so narrow that the carriages which go this 
way and that have trouble in passing, and we are often 
crowded against the walls by the hucksters and milk- 
women, who ride quite close to the sidewalk to keep out 
of the throng. The hucksters carry their vegetables about 
in panniers slung upon donkeys, 
and the bread man rides a horse 
with a bag of loaves on each side. 

That woman who is coming to- 
ward us is a milkwoman. See 
how she bobs up and down as her 
pony trots onward. She has her 
cans in those leather buckets fast- 
ened to the sides of the pony, and 
she is sitting almost on top of the 
buckets, with her feet about his 
neck. She is dressed in bright 
calico and wears above her brown 
face a broad-brimmed Panama 
hat. Now she stops and slides 
down over the horse's neck to the street. She ties a rope 
around his front legs at the ankles to keep him from run- 
ning away, and takes one of the buckets into that house. 




That is a milkwoman. 



66 PERU. 

All the milk of Lima is thus served. The streets are too 
narrow for carts or large wagons, and the huckstering is 
done on horses, donkeys, or mules. 

Next morning we go to the market. Here we find 
dozens of donkeys loaded with all sorts of things. We 
see scores of milkwomen starting out on their horses to 
peddle milk through the city. The big market house is 
thronged with cooks and other women buying things for 
their tables. 

As we go by the stalls we see that Peru is a land of 
good things to eat. There are string beans as long as 
your arm. They are tied up in bunches and hung upon 
poles. We see potatoes of all kinds, some of which are as 
yellow as gold. They are the i^mous papas amarillas, the 
yellow potatoes of Peru. They are delicious when cooked. 

We see sweet potatoes of many varieties, and quantities 
of yucca, a rootlike tuber somewhat like the potato, used 
in many of the South American countries. It grows as big 
around as a baseball bat, and is often two feet in length. 
It is very white, and its flesh is somewhat waxy and jelly- 
Hke. 

There are roasting ears at almost all the vegetable stands, 
and squashes, pumpkins, and many kinds of melons. 
There are oranges, lemons, and alligator pears. There are 
guavas and pomegranates, pineapples and bananas, peaches 
and pears, and grapes of many kinds. There are excellent 
fish, one kind of which is dressed with lemon juice and 
eaten raw. There are all sorts of meats, and you can buy 
a kid or a half-dozen guinea pigs for a trifle. The Peru- 
vians are veTy fond of guinea pigs, and raise them for food. 
The meat tastes like young pigeon or the tenderest squir- 
rel. We try it ourselves in the form of a stew, and find it 
delicious. 



UP THE ANDES. 67 



VIII. UP THE ANDES. 

GET out your overcoats, put on your high boots or 
thick shoes, and take your gloves with you. We are 
bound for the top of the Andes, and may have to tramp 
through the snow. 

- We shall go there upon the Oro^ya Railroad, the steep- 
est railroad of the world. It begins at Callao, on the Pa- 
cific, and passes through Lima on its way up the Andes. It 
was planned by an American named Meiggs, who intended 
that it should connect the seaport with the famous silver 
mines of Cerro de Pasco. It would cost so much, how- 
ever, that it has not been completed. It now extends to 
a short distance on the other side of the mountains, al- 
though it is planned to build it at some time to the navi- 
gable tributaries of the Amazon, about three hundred 
miles farther on. 

n 

As it is, the road is less than one hundred and fifty miles 
long. It is so steep, however, that it will carry us more 
than three miles above where we now are, and bring us to 
the great plateau between the tops of the Andes. 

Leaving Lima at seven o'clock in the morning, we first 
travel through the sugar and cotton plantations of the 
Rimac valley. The fields are as green as Georgia in June. 
The cotton plants are in blossom, and the plantations look 
like vast gardens of pink and light-yellow roses. There 
are gangs of Indian peons, clad in white cotton, working 
among them. The fields are as well kept as our gardens 
at home. 

We pass several villages of one-story houses, go by a 
cotton mill and a large sugar factory, and then shoot out 



6^ 



PERU. 



of the green into the dry foothills of the Andes. What a 
change ! The vegetation has disappeared. The low hills 
are bleak and bare in the light of the early morning. We 
ride for miles, climbing higher and higher, and seeing 
nothing but dazzling gray rock. 

Farther on a thin fuzz of green crops out of the gray. 
Now a little cactus and small bunches of weeds appear. 




Fruit Sellers at Railroad Station. 



As we rise higher still the mountains grow greener. At a 
mile above the sea there is a thin coat of grass, and at two 
miles we count forty different kinds of flowers at a stop- 
ping of the train. There are buttercups without number, 
and flowers of all colors, the names of which we do not 
know. It is now winter in the Andes, when halfway up 
the western slope there are frequent mists or light rains. 
In summer all is as gray and sterile as the desert below. 



UP THE ANDES. 69 

Now we are still higher. We have come to a region 
where only bits of soil are to be seen here and there. 
Notice how the people till every foot of good ground. 
The fields on this hill are not bigger than a bedspread, 
and those on the other side of the valley opposite the 
railroad seem in the distance the size of a handkerchief. 
See those green ledges one above the other on the moun- 
tainside. They rise almost to the tops of the hills, and 
were so made that a man could stand on any of the lower 
ones and weed the crop on the ledge just above. Those 
terraces were built by the Indians in the time of the 
Incas. They are used only for grazing to-day. 

Now we have stopped at a station. About it there is a 
village of huts with walls of sun-dried brick and roofs of 
gray thatch. The stones upon the roof have been laid 
there to keep the strong winds from lifting the thatch. 
How small the huts are, and how mean ! Some are not 
better than dog kennels. They are the homes of the 
people who are gathering about us as we stand on the 
platform. They are dark-faced Indian men, women, and 
children, dressed in white cottons. You may see more of 
them at work in the fields, or tending the sheep which 
graze in the mountains. 

How pure the air is, and how grand the scenes all about 
us! The mountains rise almost straight up over our 
heads. The railroad hangs to their sides, and we ride for 
miles between walls of rock which look like gigantic 
cathedrals, their spires lost in the clouds. We shoot 
through tunnels which wind about like the letter S, and 
cross steel bridges over deep canyons above mountain 
streams. Every turn brings new pictures, some of which 
are of terrible grandeur. 

What a triumph of modern engineering was the build- 

CARP. S. AM. — 5 



70 



PERU. 



ing of this track up the Andes ! It cost many millions of 
dollars and thousands of lives. The road goes up some 
of the steepest mountains of the globe. Much of its bed 
was cut out of the rocks. At times the men had to be 
lowered in baskets over the precipices to drill holes for the 




" We shoot through tunnels." 



blasting. The tracks wind this way and that, one above 
the other, so that in places we can count five different 
tracks which run parallel one over the other, showing us 
how the road had to zigzag to climb its way up. 

Farther up the air grows colder. At two miles we pass 
through a rainstorm, and later on are surrounded by snow. 
Now the mist and clouds have come down about us, and 
we are enveloped in fog. A little higher, and we are 
above the clouds. There the wind is carrying the clouds 



UP THE ANDES. 7 1 

down the Andes, the air becomes clear, and we shudder at 
the precipices along which the track crawls. 

Now we are on the tops of the Andes. That white 
peak above us is Mount Meiggs. Its summit is more 
than seventeen thousand feet above the sea, and where we 
stop at the entrance to the Galera tunnel, going through 
the mountain, we are three miles higher up in the air than 
when we started this morning. 

We are on the highest railroad point in the world, far 
above the height of Fujiyama, the sacred snow capped 
mountain of Japan. We are about as high up as Mont 
Blanc or any point in Europe, and a thousand feet higher 
than Pikes Peak or any other mountain in the United 
States outside Alaska. There is a blue glacier hanging 
over us on the top of Mount Meiggs, and right under it, 
in the middle of the tunnel, is a place where the waters 
flowing to the Atlantic and Pacific divide. We go in and 
take a drink from the stream at the side of the railroad, 
which is trickling on its way to the Rimac river and the 
Pacific, and then by a jump reach a place where we bend 
over and scoop up some water which is about starting 
down the east slope of the Andes into one of the tribu- 
taries of the Amazon, on its way to the Atlantic. 

We walk farther on through the tunnel to the eastern 
slope of the Andes. There are snow banks outside at the 
edge of the tunnel, and we start a snow fight away up here 
in the clouds. We are soon glad to stop. The air is so 
rare that every throw sends our hearts into our throats, and 
we pant for breath. We try to yell, but our voices are 
weak from the thinness of the air, and the yell ends in a 
squeak. Our boots grow suddenly heavy. We walk 
slowly, and in climbing the hills we crawl. Some of us 
are attacked with the mountain sickness, which comes to 



72 



PERU. 




Entrance to the Galera Tunnel. 

many when they first go so high up In the air. We have 
terrible headaches, and at the same time feel severe nausea. 
During our first night in the mountains we cannot sleep. 
Some of us faint away, and blood flows from our mouths, 
eyes, and noses. The sickness soon passes off, however, 
and we then enjoy the strange sights and pure air of the 
Andes. 

IX. ON THE ROOF OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



WE start southward this morning upon the high plateau 
of the Andes. The cold air bites our noses. There 
are snowy mountains on each side of us. We are on what 
might be called the roof of the South American conti- 



ON THE ROOF OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



73 



nent. The Andes are among the highest mountains of the 
globe. They have several peaks which rise more than 
four miles above the sea. We saw some of the greatest 
of them in Ecuador, and we shall travel among others on 
our way south through Peru and Bolivia. 




Peru and Bolivia. 



The highest of the Andes is Mount Aconcagua (a-c6n- 
ca'gua), in Chile. It is 23,910 feet high. Beginning with 
it and running northward to Ecuador, the mountains ex- 
tend in an irregular double chain, upholding this lofty 
plateau upon which we now are. The plateau in some 
parts of Peru is five hundred miles wide, and much of it is 
about two miles and a half above the sea. 

We are many days riding on horseback upon it to Bo- 
livia. Now and then we make excursions into the hills, 
to the camps where men are mining for sih'er and gold. 
The Andes of this region are noted for their mineral de- 



74 PERU. 

posits, and great quantities of the precious metals are taken 
out of them every year. 

We spend the most of the time, however, upon the pla- 
teau. We ride on and on over a desolate plain covered 
with a scanty growth of fuzzy green grass. How it rains ! 
This is the winter season. We have a storm of hail, snow, 
or rain almost every day. The grass is soaked with water, 
which it holds like a sponge, and we cannot get down 
from our horses without wetting our feet. 

There are few trees. The little mud huts which we see 
have small patches of potatoes, green barley, or quinua 
(keenVa) about them. 

This plateau is the natural home of the potato. It was 
taken from here to Europe, and is said to have been first 
introduced into Italy about seventy years after Columbus 
discovered America. Later on potatoes were cultivated 
extensively in Ireland, so many being used there that they 
are sometimes called Irish potatoes. The potatoes we see 
here are very small. Most of them are not bigger than 
walnuts. It takes a milder climate and richer soil to make 
them grow to the size of the large potatoes sold in our 
markets. 

We are so high up that barley will not ripen. That which 
we see is grown for forage. The quinua, to a certain 
extent, takes the place of other grains in these highlands. 
It is a plant which looks much like dockweed. It has 
yellow or red leaves, and its seeds when shelled out are 
white. They a%£ Hke hominy ground fine. Quinua is 
eaten as mush and is cooked in stews. 

There are also dandelions and other hardy flowers on 
the plains, and there are many evergreen bushes, which 
grow only as tall as our ankles, for all things are stunted 
here away up in the air. 



ON THE ROOF OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



75 



What are those queer animals we see in the pastures? 
We now and then meet droves of them going along with 
bags on their backs. They are bigger than sheep, but 
they look not unlike them, for they are covered with wool. 
They have long necks, with heads like a camel's. Their 




^^ 



Llamas, 



feet and legs are like those of a deer. See how gracefully 
they walk. Notice how they hold their Httle heads in the 
air, pricking up their ears as they see us, for all the world 
Hke so many Skye terriers. Those are llamas, the odd Httle 
animals which act as beasts of burden upon this highland. 

Are they not beautiful ? Some are snow white, some 
seal brown, and a few black and spotted. Their wool is 
long. It is used by the Indians to make ponchos, blankets, 
and clothes. 

Let us examine the llamas more closely. Take this 
drove which is coming toward us, each little animal 



76 PERU. 

carrying a bag of silver ore on his back. Notice how 
small the loads are. Each load weighs just one hundred 
pounds. The llama is very particular as to how much he 
does, and that is the biggest load he will stand. If you 
put on more he will not cry or groan, as the camel does, 
but will calmly kneel down and not move until his load is 
made right. 

Look out ! Don't stroke that beast over there ! Don't 
you see he is angry by the way he is shaking his head ? 

And do llamas bite? 

They do not bite, but when they are angry they spit, 
and I would rather have three camels bite me than be spat 
upon by one llama. A llama's spittle has the most offen- 
sive of smells. The little beast chews its cud like a cow. 
It has a special place somewhere in its body which is well 
filled with fluid for such an occasion. If once hit you will 
find it hard to get the stench out of your clothes, and you 
cannot go on with our party until you have had a bath 
and a change. Most of the llamas, however, are gentle, 
and we fall in love with them as we see them everywhere 
on the plains. 

But are these little llamas on the pastures through which 
we are riding? Some are black, and some are snow white. 
No ; those are not llamas, although they look hke them. 
They are alpacas, a domestic animal which is valued for 
its long, silky wool. The wool is straighter and stronger 
than sheep's wool. It is used for shawls, fine clothes, and 
umbrellas, and much of it goes from Peru to our country. 

The vicuna (ve-coon^a) is an animal of much the same 
species, which runs wild in these regions. We may have 
a chance to shoot one later on. It runs like a deer and is 
very wary. Vicuiia fur is like yellow^ velvet, and we can 
buy rugs of it in the stores of the Bolivian cities. Still 



ON THE ROOF OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



11 



farther south we shall see the guanaco, which also looks 
like the llama. It has yellow-and-white fur about as 
long as that of a 
rabbit. 

In our journey 
we now and then 
cross high val- 
leys which cut 
through the pla- 
teau. Here the 
cHmate is milder, 
and we find all 
kinds of semi- 
tropical fruits. 
In one of these 
valleys Cuzco 
(koos'ko), the 
capital of the In- 
cas, was located. 
The town was situated at a place where three rivers meet, 
at more than two miles above the sea. There is a small 
city standing on the same site to-day. We see here the 
ruins of the great temples which the Spaniards found in 
the days of Pizarro. Then Cuzco was the chief city of 
the great nation of civilized Indians which inhabited almost 
the whole of western South America. It was a grand 
city, and some of its temples were plated with gold. The 
Spaniards tore seven hundred gold plates, each as big as 
the lid of a large chest, from the walls of the Temple of 
the Sun, and when they left after their first visit their horses 
were loaded with gold. 

At that time the plateau was quite thickly populated. 
It is still so to-day. Cuzco itself has about tw^enty thou- 




Vicuna. 



78 



PERU. 



sand inhabitants, and most of the people of Peru live in 
these plains between the two ranges of mountains. 

We are surprised to see so many Indians. In Cuzco 
there are twelve Indians to one white man, and on our 
way down the plateau we meet many queer-looking 
Indian men, women, and children. 
They are in their bare feet, and they 
wear an odd dress. 

The men have on bright-colored 
ponchos, black vests, and wide black 
trousers slit up as far as the knee at 
the back. Each wears a bright woolen 
cap, knit much like a nightcap, with 
flaps down over the ears. Over the 
cap he has a little felt hat, which seems 
to be more for ornament than warmth. 
The Indian women wear black or blue 
woolen skirts which are quite short, 
reaching just below the knees. They 
have queerly shaped hats with low 
crowns and broad brims. We see 
many of them in the fields, watching 
the llamas, alpacas, and sheep. They are very industri- 
ous. Each has a long spool of wool in her hand, and she 
spins llama wool as she watches her flock. 

We meet more Indians as we go on toward Lake Titi- 
caca, and we shall see their mud villages everywhere 
during our journeys on the high plateau of Bolivia. They 
belong to the two tribes, the Quichua (ke-choo^a) and 
Aymara (i-ma-ra'), the same tribes which were here when 
the Spaniards first came. Even now they number more 
than a million. 

They are queer people, and have habits and ways of 




Indian Water Carrier 



ON THE ROOF OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



79 



their own. Most of them are httle more than slaves to 
the white and mixed races who own the most of the lands. 
Each farm has a little colony of Indians upon it, and each 
Indian family has its mud hut. Throughout the whole 
year the Indians work three days each week for the 




" Each Indian family has its mud hut." 

owner of the land, as rent for their little huts and the 
small patches of ground about them. The remaining 
three days they have for themselves. If their master does 
not want their work, he can hire them out to others, and 
if they do not obey he can punish them. 

The Indians are very docile, and will bear much with- 
out getting angry. It is said they love their masters 
and will band together to fight for them. The Indians of 
the different farms often have quarrels, and at such times 



8o 



PERU. 



each band marches upon the other as though in actual 
warfare. They sometimes use guns, but more often sHngs, 
with which they throw stones with great force and skill, 
sometimes kiUing one another in their fights. 

Let us enter an Indian hut. The one we select would 
hardly make a respectable pigsty for one of our farms. 
It is of mud, and is not more than ten feet square. Its 
thatched roof is so low that we can touch it when we 
stand outside the front door, and as we go in we have to 
stoop down, besides Hfting our feet up as high as a chair 
to get over the mud sill and through the hole which serves 
as an entrance. Inside there is only about enough space 
in which to turn round. One side 
of the room is filled with farm tools. 
On the other side is a donkey, and 
the chickens squawk as they run 
here and there to get out of our 
way. There is little furniture. The 
people sit on the floor. They often 
sleep sitting, huddling themselves 
close together for warmth. 

That little clay pot over there 
with the ashes beneath it is the 
stove. The hut has no chimney, 
and the smoke finds its way out as 
it can. The cooking is simple. A 
favorite dish is challona stew, with 
chuno (choon'yo), or frozen pota- 
toes, mixed with it. Challona is 
dried mutton. The sheep is split 
open when killed, and then left out 
to freeze. When it is stiff, water is sprinkled over it, and it 
is frozen again, It is then hung up and dried, after which 




Indian with Sling. 



STEAMBOATING ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 8l 

it becomes so tough that it will keep for months. It must, 
however, be cut up in small bits and boiled a long time 
before it is tender; then the natives think it is delicious. 
We find chuno for sale in the markets of Cuzco, and we 
can buy it everywhere on the high plateau of the Andes. 
It looks like bits of bleached bones, or perhaps more like 
the large flat pebbles you find on the seashore. It is 
really potatoes which are frozen and dried, so that they 
can be kept for a year without spoiling. The raw pota- 
toes are first soaked in water, being wet every day, and 
left out at night until they freeze. Next the skins are 
trodden off with the bare feet, and the potatoes are thor- 
oughly dried in the air. They are now as white as snow 
and as hard as rock. They are soaked before cooking, 
and are usually served as a stew. We eat some, but they 
are rather insipid. 



D>^< 



X. STEAMBOATING ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 

STEAMBOATING above the clouds! Floating over 
some of the highest waters of the globe ! Sailing in 
sight of glacial snows amid the tops of the Andes, so near 
the sky that heaven and earth seem to meet close around 
us, and make us think we are on the very roof of the world ! 
We are outside the harbor of Puno (poo^no), on the broad 
waters of Lake Titicaca. 

The air is so clear we can see for miles. That blue 
mass in front is Titicaca Island. It will take us four 
hours to steam to it, but it looks quite near as it lies there 
like a great blue balloon on the water. There are other 
masses of blue here and there. There are altogether 



B2 



PERU. 



eight large islands in the lake, some of which are inhabited. 
Now we are steaming by one. See, the bits of land be- 
tween the rocks are green with scanty crops of potatoes, 
barley, and quinua. The soil is cultivated to the tops of 




Indians in Balsas, Lake Titicaca. 

the hills, and red-faced Indians are at work in the fields. 
Their huts of stone and thatch are down near the shore. 
Some have llamas, sheep, and donkeys tethered about 
them. 

How grand are the mountains! There is nothing finer 
in the Himalayas or the Alps than the snowy peaks which 
rise above us. That silvery mass to the north is Sorata 
(so-ra^ta), next to Aconcagua the highest of the Andes. 
The great wall of mountains which stretches from it south 
there to the east is the Sorata range, and that tall peak 



STEAMBOATING ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 83 

rising high over the others is IlHmani (el-ye-ma'ne), which 
is about four miles in height. 

This lake upon which we are floating is higher up in the 
air than most of the mountain tops in our country. Is it 
not a wonderful body of water? It is almost half as large 
as Lake Ontario, and it lies here twice as high as the top 
of Mount Washington. Those little huts we see on the 
islands are among the highest houses in the world in 
which people live, and this is really the loftiest of all lakes 
upon which steamboats sail. 

But where does the lake come from, and where does it 
go ? We can easily see its source by looking at the snows 
and glaciers about us. It is made by the snow water of 
nine rivers from the Andean peaks, which flow into it. 
Where the water all goes is not known. The lake re- 
mains at about the same level from one year's end to the 
other, although it has no visible outlet to the sea. A 
part of its waters go into the river Desaguadero (das-a- 
gwa-da^ro) and on into a lake of the same name, or, as it 
is called in Bolivia, Lake Poo'po. Lake Poopo has no 
outlet that can be seen. 

But let us take a look at our ship. It is carrying us 
over Lake Titicaca at twelve miles an hour. It is as 
beautiful as a gentleman's yacht. It is named the Choya, 
and when we look at the engine we find there is a plate 
stating that the ship was built away off in Glasgow, 
Scotland. 

This seems very strange. How could they possibly get 
such a big ship over the Andes? The CJioya weighs so 
much that if it could be loaded on wagons a thousand 
horses could not pull it. How could they possibly lift 
such a weight over these mountains, which everywhere 
in Peru are almost as high as Pikes Peak? 



84 



PERU. 



Of course they could not if they tried to Hft the ship 
all at once. But such a vessel was needed for commerce, 
and commerce works in all sorts of ways to secure its 
own ends. All of its parts were put on a steamer and 
brought from Glasgow around through the Strait of 
Magellan to the seaport Mollendo, in southern Peru. 




Let us take a look at our ship." 



At Mollendo there is the beginning of a railroad quite 
as wonderful as that upon which we came over the Andes 
from Lima. It is three hundred miles long, and connects 
the seacoast with Arequipa (a-ra-ke'pa), one of the chief 
cities of Peru, and also with Puno, on Lake Titicaca. The 
parts of the ship were put on the car at Mollendo, and the 
engines puffed as they carried them over the Andes. 



STEAMBOATING ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 85 

At Puno they were taken off, joined together, and 
launched on the lake, so that to-day we can sail upon 
these high waters in a floating house made in Scotland. 
This is one of the wonders of commerce. 

We are still more interested when the engineer tells us 
that the coal he is using comes from Australia, so that 
both sides of the world seem to be working to help us 
along on our journey. 

When we examine the freight on the Choya we see how 
the ship has become one of the agents of commerce. We 
have goods from different parts of the world which we are 
carrying to Bolivia, and the captain tells us that he is to. 
bring back a load of copper, gold, silver, tin, and Peruvian 
bark, to be sent from Puno down to the Pacific. Who 
knows but that some of that copper will be used in the 
same works in Glasgow where the steamer was made, and 
whether some of the silver and gold may not find its way 
to Australia to pay the very miners who have furnished 
our coal? 

Now we are approaching Chililaya (che-li-la'ya), the 
port of Bolivia. We see many boats near the shore. 
Some are starting out to bring freight to the steamer. 
What queer things they are! They appear to be made 
of straw, but men are working upon them, and there is one 
that has a donkey and a llama on board. Some have straw 
sails, and others are being poled through the water. Those 
bo?ts are balsas, a curious craft used by the Indians of 
Lake Titicaca. They are just like the boats which the 
Spaniards found these people using centuries ago. 

There is one which has come close to our steamer. It 
is made of long reeds, which grow in quantities on the 
edge of the lake. The reeds are laid together and 
tied tightly in rolls. They are so woven and fastened 



86 



PERU. 



that they form a raftlike boat which will float on the 
water. 

But we have at last reached the wharf. There is a 
crowd of Indians ready to unload the steamer. We hand 
over our baggage to two queer-looking fellows, and walk 
with them to the shore. Here there are hundreds of 




Inca Ruins, Lake Titicaca. 



mules with goods awaiting shipment to Puno. There are 
droves of llamas which have brought in packages of rubber 
and coffee, and there are numerous donkeys carrying the 
bark from which quinine is made. We stop a moment, 
watching the drivers unload their beasts, and then walk on 
up the hill to the rude little hotel where we have to stay 
overnight. 



LA PAZ. 87 



XI. TRAVELS IN BOLIVIA. 

WHEN we land at Chililaya we are in Bolivia. We are 
just forty-seven miles from its chief city, La Paz. 
We take a stage drawn b}^ eight mules for the journey. 
We go on the gallop all day long, stopping only to change 
mules every three hours. We sit outside with the driver. 
He is an Indian. He has a little pile of stones beside him, 
from which he now and then makes a good throw at the 
long ears of such of the animals as are lagging behind. 

The ride is delightful. The air is always bracing on 
the high plateau of Bolivia. It is so clear we can see for 
miles. To the east is a great wall of snow mountains, 
with Illimani rising above the rest of the peaks, and away 
off to the west are lower hills, which seem to climb over 
one another and finally end in snow at the sky. Now we 
pass a mud hut, and now a flock of llamas, alpacas, or 
sheep, feeding on the thin grass ; but other than this there 
is nothing about us but the sky, the plains, and the moun- 
tains. 

As we near the close of the day we look for the city to 
which we are going. We are hungry, and wonder whether 
we shall get there before dark, when at last the driver 
pulls up the mules on their haunches, and the stage stops. 
We are on the brink of a precipice, and there a thousand 
feet below us, in a little gorge in the mountains, is the 
curious city of La Paz. 

It is so far down that we can hardly distinguish the 
houses. They look like a jumble of bright-colored boxes, 
with trees here and there rising out above their red roofs. 
They grow plainer as we gallop on our winding way down 

CARP. S. AM. — 6 



88 



BOLIVIA. 



the steep slopes of the hill. We are soon riding between 
walled gardens, and at last the stage stops in the heart of 
the town. 

How queer it all is ! Most of the people about us are 
clad in the brightest of reds, blues, and greens. Every 
other man wears a poncho, or blanket, with his head 




La Paz, Bolivia. 

through a hole in its center, and some of the women have 
striped shawls, bright-colored short skirts, and queerly 
shaped hats. Five eighths of the people are Indians, and 
the remainder are whites and of the mixed race of Indians 
and whites called cholos. 

Even the houses are a blaze of bright colors. Their 
walls are painted in the most delicate tints of red, blue, 
and green. There is a lavender grocery store ; next to it 



LA PAZ. 



89 



a shoe shop of rose pink; and farther on are other estab- 
Hshments of cream and sky bkie. The houses are of one 
or two stories. The shops are open to the street, so that 
we can see all that goes on within. 

But where can we get a cab or dray to carry our bag- 
gage to the hotel ? There are none in sight, and we learn 
there are none in La Paz. The streets are so narrow and 
so up hill and down that no vehicles are used in the city, 
and all freighting is done by donkeys, ponies, llamas, and 
men. The Indian porters will carry our boxes. There are 
a dozen porters about the stage office. We give each man 
a trunk, and he trots off to 






the hotel up the hills with 
the trunk on his back, while 
we walk behind. 

The next morning we start 
out for a tour of the city, go- 
ing up the hills very slowly, 
for the air is so pure that we 
are soon out of breath. 

We visit the markets. It is 
early morning, but the streets 
are filled with buyers and 
sellers, with Indians, cholos, 
and whites, dressed in all 
colors of the rainbow. 

There are scores of Indian 
women carrying fruit and 
vegetables to the markets for sale. Their burdens are tied 
up in striped blankets of blue, red, yellow, and green, and 
they bend half double as they walk onward. They squat 
down on the streets and spread their wares out before 
them, peddling them by the piece or the pile. 




Cholo Girl. 



90 



BOLIVIA. 



There are Indian men wearing bright ponchos, and such 
a lot of Indian babies that we have to pick our way care- 
fully to keep from treading upon them. Some lie on the 

cold stones and play 
with the merchan- 
dise their mothers 
are selling. Some 
are too young to 
crawl, and their big 
eyes peep out of the 
shawls in which they 
are tied to the backs 
of their mothers. 
Most of the babies 
are laughing. There 
is one crying, and 
over there is another 
which has crawled 
away from its mother 
and is almost under 



"The Indian porters carry our boxes 

the feet of those llamas which are coming up the street. 
Now its mother sees it and runs to save it. 

Stop and look at the queer things for sale all about us. 
What funny potatoes ! Those in that pil^ are not bigger 
than chestnuts, and they are as pink as the toes of the 
baby who is playing among them. There are some of a 
violet color, while those in the next pile are as black as 
your boots. The white ones beside that woman over the 
way are chuno, and have been frozen for sale. 

What a variety of fruits ! We find some on every 
corner, and the market is filled with quinces, peaches, and 
pears, as well as oranges, lemons, and pineapples. The 
fruit all comes from the lands lower down, for it is only a 




LA PAZ. 



91 



few days' ride on muleback from here to the tropical val- 
leys of the Andes., and there are all kinds of climates 
farther down the mountains, and all kinds of fruits. 




Bolivian Boys. 

What are those big green bean pods that woman is sell- 
ing? They are not beans at all. They are a kind of 
fruit which is eaten raw. If you will buy one and break 
it open you will see that the seeds within it are imbedded 
in a pulp which looks like spun silk. We smack our lips 
as we eat it, for when it is cold it is very much like finely 
flavored ice cream. 

Is this not a wonderful country where all kinds of fruits 
grow so near together? Yes, indeed; Bolivia is naturally 
one of the rich countries of the world. In the eastern 
part of it, below the plateau, there are great plains upon 
which vast herds of cattle are feeding. In its forests there 



92 BOLIVIA. 

are rubber trees, from which the sap is gathered and 
shipped down the Beni and Madeira to the mouth of the 
Amazon, whence it is sent all over the world to bis used 
for making tires, coats, overshoes, and all sorts of such 
things. There are parts of Bolivia that have never been 
explored, and we could easily ride down the eastern slopes 
of the mountains and come into a region inhabited only 
by the most savage of Indians. 

Some of the wild Indians are cannibals. Some go 
about naked, and some wear plates of wood and metal in 
the lobes of their ears, each plate being as large as a silver 
dollar. Many of them make war upon white men, and 
some use blowguns, with which they shoot poisoned ar- 
rows at their enemies. The guns are reeds from ten to 
twelve feet long, and the sHghtest scratch of one of the 
arrows causes immediate death. 

On the eastern slopes of the Andes, by a very short 
ride on muleback, we could reach the Yungas valley, 
where there are plantations of coffee, 
coca, and cinchona trees. 

Have you ever heard of cinchona? 
Perhaps not, but I venture every 
one of you has sometime had to take 
quinine. Quinine is the bitter white 
.^^ powder made from the bark of the cin- 
chona tree. It is especially good for 
malarial fevers, and we shall need some 
later on when we go up the Amazon. 
We see loads of cinchona bark on 

Cinchona _ _,,,., 

the streets of La Paz. That little 

donkey which is just turning the corner has a bundle of it 
on each side of his back. Other donkeys are coming be- 
hind him, each of which carries a load. That drove is 




LA PAZ. 93 

bringing the bark into La Paz. Here it will be repacked 
and shipped to all parts of the world. 

Let us go and pull out a piece of the bark and take a 
bite of it. How bitter it is! It tastes like quinine. 

Bolivia raises some of the best cinchona, although ex- 
cellent cinchona is also raised in Peru and all along the 
eastern slopes of the Andes between here and Colombia. 

Plantations have been recently started for raising cin- 
chona trees. Six years after planting, the trees are cut 
down and their bark stripped off for quinine. At this age 
each tree will produce about four pounds of bark. The 
next year after cutting, sprouts will come up from the 
stumps, and six years later another crop is ready for har- 
vest. 

The most of the quinine of commerce, however, comes 
from wild trees. The bark we tasted on the streets of La 
Paz was gathered from the forests at the head of the Beni 
river. It was carried through the woods for miles on the 
backs of Indians, and was then loaded upon the donkeys 
which brought it to La Paz. 

But what is that we see on those other donkeys which 
are now going by us? The bundles are of about the same 
size as the cinchona bundles, but the stuff within them 
looks like leaves. That is coca leaves, from which cocaine, 
a drug used to deaden pain, is made. Dentists often put 
cocaine in a sensitive tooth when it has to be filled. 

Coca is also used by the Indians on the Bolivian pla- 
teau as a chew. Every Indian we meet has a lump of 
coca inside his cheek, and men, women, and children are 
chewing it all day long. The Indians in the mines will not 
work unless their employers give them, in addition to their 
v/ages, some coca to chew every day, and all of the Indians 
would rather have coca than coffee, tea, or tobacco. 



94 



BOLIVIA. 



Vast quantities of it are produced every year, and are 
shipped on llamas and donkeys to all parts of Bolivia, to 
Peru, and to Chile. 

You must not confound coca with chocolate, or cacao, 
which is sometimes called cocoa, nor with the cocdanut 
tree. The coca plant is a shrub which grows from four to 




The Alamada or Promenade, La Paz. 

six feet in height. It has leaves much like our winter- 
green shrub. They are very stimulating, and the Indians 
tell us that chewing coca will keep out the cold and also 
satisfy hunger. 

We try a chew ourselves, putting some lime with it as 
the Indians do. The leaves taste rather bitter, the lime 
burns our tongues, and as the habit seems very disgusting, 
we decide to leave coca alone. 



MINERAL WEALTH. 



95 



XII. THE MINERAL WEALTH OF 
THE ANDES. 



ATL. 
Jr\ inc 



^T La Paz we are not far from some of the richest min- 
[g regions of the world. The lofty Andes through- 
out their Whole length, from the Isthmus of Panama to the 
Strait of Magellan, contain some gold. The Sorata range, 
which now looks down upon us, has rich veins of tin, 
and vast quantities of copper are yearly taken out of 
the mountains to the 
north and to the 
south. 

There is so much 
gold on the east slope 
of the Peruvian An- 
des that during the 
floods the streams 
wash down grains 
and nuggets of gold. 
Many of the streams 
are dry part of the 
year, and the Indi- 
ans have paved them 
with stones, so that 
the heavy gold is 
caught in the cracks 
when it drops. The 
golden grains are 
thus carried down 
when the rivers are 
high, and so caught Hydraulic Mining. 




96 



BOLIVIA. 




that they can be picked up when the streams fall. This 
was one of the gold-mining methods of the Incas, and it 
was thus that much of the gold which the Spaniards took 
from them was gathered. 

We see men washing gold in many places as we ride 
through Bolivia. The miners are Indians employed by 
the white men. There are some at work near La Paz. 

They take the gravel and 
dirt to the sides of the 
streams, and roll it about 
in wooden bowls as big 
as those in which we 
knead bread. From time 
to time they dip up a 
little water into the bowl, 
and shake it around so 
that all the dirt melts into 
the water and can be 
poured out. 

After a while there is 
nothing but the gold and 
the gravel. The miners 
throw the gravel away 
handful by handful, first 
looking it carefully over and dropping back into the bowl 
the little yellow bits which they see. Finally all the gravel 
has been thrown out, and there is left a little pile of yellow 
pebbles and grains, some of which are not bigger than the 
end of a needle. This is the gold. Such methods of min- 
ing are wasteful, for much of the gold dust is- so small that 
the grains cannot be seen. It is only lately that mercury 
and other modern means which we employ to collect gold 
have been much used. 




Washing Gold. 



MINERAL WEALTH. 97 

When we visit the silver mines, we find that most of the 
work there is done with rude tools. In the older mines the 
Indians use hammers and drills to break up the ore. They 
carry it out of the mines on their backs in sacks of rawhide. 

Silver is found in veins of ore in the rocks, and these 
veins often extend far down under the earth. Some of 
the mines are hence very deep. The Indians climb out 
of them upon ladders or notched sticks, with heavy sacks 
of ore on their backs. They work almost naked, wearing 
only breechcloths about their waists, singing weird songs 
as they dig out the ore. 

After the ore is taken from the mines it is broken up 
into small pieces with hammers by women and children. 
The best of it is then ground to powder by rolling great 
stones over it. The powder is mixed with mercury, which 
dissolves the silver out of the dust, and by other chemical 
processes it is then made ready for the use of man. 

Some of the richest silver mines of the world are in 
the Andes. A little north of Mount Meiggs, where we 
crossed the coast range in Peru, is the town of Cerro 
de Pasco, built about one of the richest bodies of silver ore 
ever known. This body was about a mile long and more 
than half a mile wide. 

The mine was discovered several hundred years ago, in 
a curious way. An Indian shepherd had wandered to this 
place one day with his flock. He found the air very cold 
as evening drew on, and kindled a fire, before which he lay 
down to sleep. When he awoke the next morning he 
discovered that the stone upon which his fire had been 
built had melted and turned to silver. Since then thou- 
sands of tons of pure silver have been taken out of that 
spot, and many of the llamas we saw on our way to Mount 
Meiggs loaded with silver had come from Cerro de Pasco. 



98 



BOLIVIA. 




Bags of Silver. 



There are other rich silver regions in different parts of 
Peru, and in the BoHvian highlands there is a strip of 
country, wider than the state of Pennsylvania, and as long 
as the distance from- Philadelphia to Omaha, which is 
dotted with silver mines. 

Bolivia has perhaps given more silver to the world than 
any other country. It has a mountain called Potosi (po- 
to'si), out of which has been taken almost three billion 
dollars' worth of silver — so much that, could it have been 
melted up and made into teaspoons, it would have fur- 
nished enough to have given two solid silver spoons to 
every man, woman, and child upon the globe. 

A ride of three days from La Paz over the plateau 
brings us to the town of Oruro (o-roo'ro), a few miles from 
Lake Poopo. Oruro has twelve thousand people. It lies 
at the foot of rocky mountains, and it is almost surrounded 
by mines which contain rich veins of silver and tin. 



MINERAL WEALTH. 



99 



Tin mines are not so common in the world as mines of 
silver and gold, but tin is of such a character that a little 
of it goes a great way. It is largely used as a coating for 
sheets of iron, to protect them from rust. The tin cups, 
pans, and pails, and other such things which we use are 
made of tin plate, which is merely iron plated with tin. 

The only mines which gave much tin to the world until 
within about two hundred years were those of southern 
England. The mines there are still worked, but Great Brit- 
ain uses so much tin that this is not nearly enough, and 
she imports a great deal from far-away lands. It is the 
same with the other countries of Europe, and also with the 
United States. Just now a great deal of tin comes from 
the Strait of Malacca, from different parts of Australia, and 
from the rich mines which we find in Peru and Bolivia. 

We spend some time in the tin mines of Oruro. They 




Breaking up Tin Ore. 



lOO CHILE. 

are noted for the fine quality of their ore. It looks to us 
much like silver. Much of it does contain silver. We 
learn that both silver and tin are often found mixed to- 
gether in the same vein. 

The ore is dug from the rocks with hammers and drills. 
It is broken to pieces and then ground to powder. It is 
next put into a furnace with other materials, and melted 
through a process called smelting. After this, when the 
furnace is opened, all the rock and dirt passes off, and the 
pure tin flows away in a bright, silverlike stream. It is 
run into molds, each of which contains fifty pounds. The 
molds soon cool, forming the bricks of tin which are 
shipped to all parts of the world. 



XIII. ON THE NITRATE DESERT AND 
THE GUANO ISLANDS. 

PUT on your dark spectacles this morning. You will 
need them to protect your eyes from the sun, for we 
are about to travel again over the glaring sands of the 
desert. The country about Oruro is sterile enough, but 
the lands through which we must pass on our way down 
to the sea are among the most barren parts of the world. 

We take the little narrow gauge railroad, which was 
built to bring the tin and silver and other things of Lower 
Bolivia to the sea, and shoot out into vast plains, upon 
which everything looks gray, bare, and forbidding. Now 
we cross fields of salt which dazzle our eyes under the 
glare of the sun, and go into regions of volcanic rock upon 
which nothing green grows. 

We go by two large blue lakes, near the shores of which 



NITRATE DESERT. lOI 

are what look like great cakes of ice. Our lips are dry 
and parched, and we long for a drink. The train stops at 
a station, and we ask the conductor if some of the ice 
cannot be brought into the car. The conductor replies 
that the white stuff is not ice at all. He says it is borax, 
and that the water of the lake is not fit to drink. 

He brings us a lump of borax from a pile which has 
just arrived at the station to be sent off to Europe. It 
looks like the finest spun silk wadded up or woven into a 
lump, and he tells us that it is used in making beads, glass, 
and cement, and for glazing pottery ware. It is also of 
value in preserving meat, fish, and milk, and forms a part 
of some kinds of medicines. It is good for sore eyes, and 
is very cleansing as a wash for the hair. 

The body of water at which we are looking is the great 
borax lake of Ascotan^, out of which thousands of tons 
of borax are taken each year and shipped to all parts of 
the world. The borax crystallizes in the waters of the 
lake, and gathers in a crust on the edges or falls to the 
bottom. It is produced by certain materials in the vol- 
canic soil about it, or perhaps by vapor which bursts up 
through the ground from the volcanic mountains which 
are found in this part of Bolivia. 

Is it not odd that such things should come out of the 
earth? Yes, indeed; but as we go farther down toward 
the sea we shall enter a region in Chile which is even more 
strange. There is a part of the coast desert where for 
hundreds of miles the sands are underlaid with a great bed 
of nitrate of soda. Nitrate of soda is a salt used for 
making nitric acid and also for enriching the soil. 

We use vast quantities of it in the United States, and 
more than a million tons are shipped from this desert to 
Europe every year. It is so valuable indeed that cities 



102 CHILE. 

have grown up on this barren coast, inhabited by the 
people who dig out the nitrate of soda and prepare it for 
sale. Such a town is Antofagasta (an-to-fa-gas'ta), where 
we end our railroad journey from the plateau to the sea. 
It contains twenty-five thousand people, and is one of the 
most thriving ports on the Pacific coast of South America. 

Making our way through the nitrate fields to the north, 
we come to a still larger city, Iquique (e-ke'ka), the chief 
nitrate port of the world. 

What a queer place for a town! Iquique is on the edge 
of the sea, below ragged hills. It is built on the sand. 
There is not a blade of grass in the country about it. It 
has not a drop of water from year's end to year's end, 
except that which is brought to it in ships or in the iron 
pipe, seventy-five miles long, which connects it with some 
springs in a desert oasis. 

Still, it is a thriving Httle city. It has stores, schools, 
newspapers, telephones, electric lights, and street cars. 
We can buy anything we want in its markets, including 
the most delicious fruits and the best of fresh meats. 
Such things are brought in by ships from other parts of 
the coast, and from nitrate alone comes the money that 
pays for them all. 

The nitrate is found on the east side of a low range of 
hills from fifteen to ninety miles back from the sea. It 
is in the form of a rocky stratum with layers of salt rock 
and sand above it, although sometimes it lies on the top 
of the ground. It is not known just how it was formed. 
Some people suppose that the desert was once the bed of 
an inland sea, and that vast quantities of seaweed, con- 
taining nitrogen, having been covered with sand, decayed, 
and, under the peculiar conditions of this region, became 
nitrate of soda. 



NITRATE DESERT. 



103 



In getting out the nitrate rock a hole about a foot wide 
is bored down through the sand, salt rock, and nitrate to 
the soft earth underneath. A small boy is now let down 
into the hole. He scoops a pocket out of the earth just 
under the stratum of nitrate, and fills it with powder, 
inserting a fuse which extends up over the top. 




Nitrate Fields. 

The boy is then pulled out and the fuse lighted. There 
is a loud explosion. A cloud of yellow smoke and dust 
goes up into the air, and the earth for a wide distance 
about is broken to pieces. The nitrate rock is now dug 
out with picks and crowbars. 

It must be further treated, however, before it is ready 
for sale. Pure nitrate of soda is not found in nature, and 
the rock we see thus blown out of the desert is more than 
half dirt and sand. It is loaded on carts and carried to 
factories which have been built in the fields. 

CARP. S. AM. — 7 



104 



CHILE. 



r>-\_c^ -1 




/ 


,=^'""^ 


S^ND 


I 


\ <^-1A/7 


SALT RDCK 
^/ ,. /, , ^/, . 


^ ■^^T h^ ( '\ 


\ N/TRATE ROCK 


\ 

\ 


^ n)trateIrock 

I" -- ^ .-. 


^ 







The factories have great boihng tanks, heated by steam 

pipes which run through them. Into these tanks of hot 

water the lumps of nitrate are thrown. The boihng melts 

up the rock, and just as salt melts and goes into water, so 

the nitrate salt is 

taken up by the 

water of the tank, 

while the dirt and 

sand sink to the 

bottom. 

After a time all 

of the nitrate of 

soda has gone out 

of the rock into the 

1-^r/^ ^R^^ \ _^^f ,4^/y boiling water. It 

^15 -- ~ now looks for all 

the world like pale 
Diagram of Nitrate Bed. ^^^^^ ^j^^p^ 

This fluid is drawn from the boiler and run into cooling 
tanks. In these the nitrate soon crystaUizes and sinks to 
the bottom, so that after a time each tank is filled with 
what looks like white sugar, while the water on top has 
become almost clear. The deposit is nitrate of soda. 

The water is now allowed to flow off, and the nitrate is 
shoveled out into piles to dry in the sun. It is next 
bagged up in sacks of three hundred pounds each and 
taken on the railroad to the seacoast, to be shipped to the 
United States and to Europe. 

There is another thing which comes from the nitrate 
rock which is carefully saved. This is iodine, a crystal- 
hne substance which is used in photography and for mak- 
ing dyes and many kinds of valuable drugS; It is obtained 
from the boiled water out of which the nitrate has been 



NITRATE DESERT. 



05 



taken. Into the water a certain quantity of bisulphite of 

soda is put. This causes all the iodine in the water to 

drop to the bottom in 

a dirty black powder. 

This powder is washed, 

and heated in tight iron 

boxes. It soon turns 

to vapor, and is then 

conducted from the 

boxes into pipes of fire 

clay. As the vapor 

touches the clay it 

cools and changes to 

crystals of a beautiful 

violet color. These 

crystals are the iodine 

of commerce. They 

are shipped to Europe, 

and thence sent to all 

parts of the world. 

Is it not curious that 
men should go so far 
and work so hard 
merely to get food for 
the soil ? The earth is 
much like man in that 
it will not work well — 
that is, produce good 
crops for many years 
in succession — without 
being fed 




"There is a loud explosion." 

The most of the nitrate is used as food for 
lands which are expected to yield the richest of crops. 
^ Good soil foods are so valuable indeed that farmers 



io6 



CHILE. 




Nitrate Factory. 

will pay high prices for them, and vast fortunes have been 
made out of other such things which are found in this 
part of South America. 

Next to nitrate of soda the chief of these is guano. 
Guano is a mixture of the manure of birds, dead seals, and 
fish, which is found along certain parts of the seacoast 
and on a number of islands not far from the shores of 
Peru and Chile. The islands are volcanic rocks. They 
are as bare as the desert. They have not a blade of 
grass or any green thing upon them, and are merely rock 
masses covered with what looks much Hke sand. 

If you stir this sand up it will give forth a smell like 
ammonia, and if you put it upon the soil it will cause it to 
produce bountiful crops. If we should stay on the islands 
overnight we could see that they are then covered by the 



GUANO ISLANDS. 



107 



birds which have for ages chosen them as their roosting 
places and homes. They are the pehcans and sea gulls 
which feed by the millions in the waters of this part of 
the Pacific. They, often bring the fish they have caught 
in their bills to the islands and leave them there. During 
some parts of the year, many seals come here to breed, 
and seals often crawl out of the sea upon these rocks to die. 




On a Guano Island. 



All this has been going on for many years, and the 
result is a deposit which is so valuable as manure that 
ships are sent here to take it away to our country and to 
Europe. There are houses upon some of the islands, put 
up for the men who dig out the guano, and on one or 
two of them there are little railroads which have been 
made to carry the guano down to the shores. 



I08 CHILE. 



XIV. ALONG THE COAST TO VALPARAISO. 

IT takes us five days by steamer to go from Iquique to 
Valparaiso (val-pa-ri'so), the chief seaport of Chile. 
The sail along the west coast is delightful. There are few 
storms, and almost every day we make a new port, at 
which we see many strange things. 

Luscious grapes and oranges are brought to the steamer 
from the valley oases of the desert, and we now and then 
take on a few barrels of wine. 

While our steamer stops at Antofagasta we have time to 
visit the largest '^melter in all South America. It has been 
built here to smelt the silver out of the ore brought down 
from the Andes. This work is done in huge furnaces, 
the ore being melted with other materials in such a way 
that the pure silver is taken out of the rocks. 

The ore is first ground to powder, which is then molded 
into bricks. As we pass through the yard we see a 
large plot of ground upon which are piled up enough 
bricks to build a big house. It is perhaps the richest 
brickyard on earth. The bricks look like blocks of gray 
sand, but they are really silver ore, ground fine and 
molded into this shape that the ore may be more easily 
smelted. 

Farther down the coast we anchor at Coquimbo (ko- 
kem'bo) to take on a big load of copper. Hundreds of 
long bars or bricks of reddish-brown metal are brought 
out to our steamer on a Hghter and put away in the hold. 

This copper comes from mines not far from the town. 
We learn that Chile has vast deposits of very rich copper. 
It lies in great lumps or veins in the mountains, and is 



ALONG THE COAST. IO9 

dug out and smelted in the furnaces at this port and else- 
where. 

Soon after leaving Coquimbo we notice that the shores 
have lost their gray, dusty look. Now and then we see 
a tree and a patch of green grass. We are out of the desert 
at last. 

We sail about two hundred miles farther south, and 
finally come to anchor in the Bay of Valparaiso. It is 
shaped like a half- moon, being walled with steep hills 
covered with luxuriant trees and beautiful flowers. A 
few miles inland from the coast there are orange and 
lemon groves, vineyards and trees bearing almost all kinds 
of fruits; and just over the mountains is the long valley 
of Chile, one of the richest farming and, fruit-raising re- 
gions of all South America. 

At Valparaiso we are not halfway along the coast. 
Chile extends from here to the Strait of Magellan. It is 
the narrowest of all countries in proportion to its length. 
It stretches only from the ocean to the top of the Andes, 
and its width is nowhere greater than the distance from 
New York to Boston. In some places, indeed, its width 
is not greater than the distance from Philadelphia to New 
York, but it is so long that if laid from east to west upon 
the United States, with one end at New York, it would 
stretch out far beyond Great Salt Lake. If you could 
twist it around, so that it would lie north and south, with 
Tierra del Fuego on the Florida Keys, the nitrate fields 
which we have just left would be in Hudson Bay, about 
even with the northern part of Labrador. 

A land of this kind must have many climates. It was 
quite hot at Iquique, but the winter air here at Valparaiso 
is pleasantly cool, and near the Strait of Magellan the 
ground is often covered with snow. The same difference 



no 



CHILE. 




Haibor, Valparaiso. 



exists in regard to rain. In the northern desert one 
never needs an umbrella, but at Valparaiso it rains now 
and then throughout the year. It rains more as you go 
farther south, and in some places so much water falls that 
the people jokingly say it rains thirteen months every 
year. 

As we reach the rain belt the desert suddenly stops; 
green fields are frequently seen ; and as we go still farther 
south we shall travel in a valley covered with crops, and 
come into a country where the grass grows luxuriantly 
and where there are gfeat forests bound together with 
vines. 

But what is the cause of the change ? Why is northern 
Chile so dry and the greater part of southern Chile wet? 

It comes from the winds. We have learned that the 



VALPARAISO. Ill 

desert exists because the winds which come from the east 
have had the water squeezed out of them by the cold air 
of the mountains before they reach the west slope. 

The winds which roll over southern Chile come from a 
different direction. They are blown toward the south- 
east. As they cross the warm waters of the Pacific they 
drink themselves full of moisture, and when they reach the 
cold part of Chile the difference in the temperature makes 
this moisture drop down. Hence we shall find that there 
are copious rains, producing many streams, which flow 
down the west slope of the Andes. On the other side of 
the mountains, in parts of Patagonia, the country is almost 
a desert, for the winds have been wrung dry before they 
reach there. 

Leaving our ship, we explore Valparaiso. The city is 
about the size of IndianapoHs. It is the best business 
point upon the whole coast, owing its growth to its harbor, 
which is large enough to float all the ships of the world. 

We come to anchor among steamers from different parts 
of Europe. They are loading and discharging goods. 
Some of them are taking on cattle, wheat, vegetables, and 
fruits for the cities of the desert farther north, and others 
have stopped on their way to add to their cargoes of 
nitrate, copper, and hides, which they will carry from 
Chile to Europe. 

We take a boat to the shore, wondering how we can 
get up the hills to the houses above us. Valparaiso rises 
from the water in the shape of an amphitheater, or like the 
grand stand of a ball ground. The streets rise in terraces, 
one above the other, so that the buildings at the top seem 
to hang out above and threaten to fall down upon those 
below. 

But see, there are cable cars cHmbing up and down the 



112 



CHILE. 



Steep hills. It is by them we shall mount from one street 
to another, for the only level land in the city is a narrow 
stretch along the shore. 

Upon this level place is the business part of Valparaiso. 
It is all on made ground. The hills were dug down and 

the waters kept 
back by walls of 
stone and iron rails, 
in order that the 
tide might not eat 
out the land. 

We step from our 
boat upon stone 
wharves, and walk 
over streets as well 
paved as our streets 
at home. It is hard 
for us to believe 
we are in a South 
American city. The 
buildings are large 
and much like those 
of our cities. The stores have plate glass windows. We 
see German and English names over some of them, and 
we learn that Valparaiso has many Europeans who have 
come here to engage in trade. 

The people do not look much different from those of 
New York and Chicago. There are electric lights. We 
hear the boys cry the newspapers, and as we notice the 
signs of enterprise all about us we believe what has been 
told us, that the Chileans are among the most enterpris- 
ing people of the South American continent. 

The country contains about three million inhabitants. 




Chileans. 



VALPARAISO. 



113 



They do not call themselves Chileans, but Chilenos (che- 
la'nos), and they pride themselves on being better and 
stronger than the people of the countries farther north. 

They are Hke them, however, in that they are the de- 
scendants of the Spaniards and of .the mixed race of 
Spaniards and Indians. The difference is that the Span- 
iards who came to Chile were chiefly from the northern 
provinces of Spain, where the people are stronger and 
better than those of the south, and also that the Chilean 
Indians were the famed Araucanians, a much stronger and 
braver race than the tribes ruled by the Incas, with whom 
the Spaniards united in Ecuador and Peru. 




Street Scene, Valparaiso 

The Chileans we see on the streets of Valparaiso are 
dressed just as we are. We hear many of them speak 



114 



CHILE. 



English, and as we look at our familiar surroundings we 
wonder whether Chile is, after all, much different from the 
United States. 

But stop. There comes a lady with a black shawl 
draped about her head, and behind her is a vegetable ped- 
dler with his stock in panniers on the sides of a mule. 
There is a bread mule being dragged along by the baker, 
and a milk mule going down that side street. Get out of 
the way of that carriage with its high-stepping horses, and, 
as you do so, look out for the horse which has just come 
around the corner. Its rider is a man with a poncho and 
a broad-brimmed hat. He is probably a rich farmer in 
from the country. We shall see many of his kind later on. 




A queer street car. 



ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. II5 

What a queer street car that is going by us! It has 
seats on top as well as inside. See that pretty woman on 
the rear. platform. She is the conductor. She is taking 
up the fares and making change from the money in her 
white apron pocket. There are women street car con- 
ductors in all of the chief cities of Chile. The custom 
was introduced when Chile was at war with Peru and the 
men were all needed for soldiers. 

But we may as well leave Valparaiso. It has so many 
foreigners that we must go inland to see how the Chileans 
live and to learn about their country. There are railroads 
to the interior, and we decide to make our first journey 
on the Transandine line. 



XV. ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA BY RAIL. 

WE have already seen something of the railroads farther 
north which go from the Pacific to the top of the 
Andes. The one upon which we are riding to-day will 
soon join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans together. It is 
the Transandine Railroad, going over the Andes from 
Valparaiso to Buenos Aires. 

Our car is a Pullman, and we can see well as we go. 
Leaving Valparaiso, the train skirts the edge of the harbor, 
passing through the rich suburb of Vina del Mar. 

How soft the air is, and how sweet the smell of the 
trees and grass after our long stay in the desert ! Morn- 
ing-glories are blooming on the fences at the roadside, and 
that great bush over there is loaded with roses. Now we 
whiz by an orange grove, almost close enough to grab at 
the yellow balls peeping out of the leaves. Now we go 
by vineyards, and now we stop at a station, at which pears, 



ii6 



CHILE. 




Transandine Railroad. 



figs, and lemons are brought to the car windows for sale. 
How cheap everything is! We can get a big bunch of 
grapes, or all the oranges we can eat, for a dime. 

Now the road leaves the coast, and we are climbing the 
hills. There is but little green except in the valleys. 
They are covered with cultivated fields, through which 
flow irrigating ditches supplied by the streams. 

See the men at work in the fields. There is one plow- 
ing. He has two white oxen joined to the plow by a 
pole. The pole is tied to the yoke, which rests on the 
necks of the oxen just back of the horns, to which it is fast- 
ened with skin ropes. 

At the next station we see oxen yoked the same way 
puUing huge carts loaded with grain. Notice the wheels 



ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 



117 



of the carts. They are twice as high as those of our carts, 
and the loads are so heavy that eight oxen are yoked in 
double file to each cart. How the wheels creak and 
screech on their way past the train ! The oxen are push- 
ing their burden along by their heads. The method of 
yoking them is cruel indeed. An ox cannot move his 
head unless his fellow ox moves at the same time. 




^^^ 



U. 






k^ 



A Load of Grain. 



The houses of the Chilean towns are very similar to 
those we saw on the coast of Peru. There are many 
huts in the fields, made of mud, with roofs of straw, 
thatch, or sheet iron. 

After we cross the coast range the farms are larger and 
the country is more thickly populated. We ride for some 



ii8 



CHILE. 



time through the Irrigated valley of the Aconcagua river, 
with the mighty mountains rising above us. We are now 
climbing the second range of the Andes. 

As we go on, gradually rising, we pass orchards of 
apples and peaches, with rich, well- watered gardens lying 
high up in the mountains. The country grows wilder and 
wilder, and at last we are at the station where the road ends. 

We are now very near the frontier of Argentina and 
within a short distance of the long Argentina Railroad, 
which crosses the pampas to Buenos Aires. We have not 




Uspallata Pass, 



ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 



119 



time now to make the whole journey, for we wish to go 
about through the southern part of the continent by the 
Strait of Magellan. So we shall merely ride over the 
mountains on mules, to look at the other end of the road, 
and then return to our travels in Chile. The railroad is 
not yet completed, but the distance between the two sec- 
tions is so short that we can go there and back in less 
than three days. 




''h:'r 




Wagon Road up the Andes, 

This road over the Andes is by the Uspallata Pass, 
which is 12,340 feet above the sea. It is a fairly good 
mountain road in the summer, but now, in the winter, it is 
often blocked up with deep snows. At times the snows 
are so heavy that all travel is stopped. The mails pile up 
at the two ends of the railroad, and the mail carriers going 
between them are sometimes lost in the storm. 

CARP. S. AM. — 8 



I20 



CHILE. 



which nothing can 



That is why the Httle stone huts which we pass now and 
then have been built. They have no windows. They 
look more like bake ovens than houses. They are for 
shelter for the passengers and postmen who are caught in 
the storms. Men sometimes have to live in them for days, 
waiting for the snows to melt in the mountains. 

There are one or two rude inns on the way, where we 
stop ; the hot soup tastes good, for we are cold. 

The Andes at this point are wild in the extreme. One 
of the worst parts of the pass is called the Valley of Deso- 
lation. Here the land is covered with volcanic rock, upon 

Now and then we see a gua- 
naco, a wild animal 
which looks somewhat 
like a llama, except that 
its fur is yellow spotted 
with white. We shall 
see more such farther 
south. 

Now a condor soars 
about over us. There 
it is between us and the 
sun, casting a shadow 
upon the snow. Condors 
when they are hungry 
are like vultures; they 
will eat dead things, 
and we are wondering 
whether that mighty 
bird is not waiting to see 
us drop in our tracks. 
How pure the air is, and how thin! We fear we may 
have another attack of mountain sickness. We are, how- 




A Condor. 



ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 121 

ever, more than a mile lower down at the summit of this 
pass than at the Galera tunnel, through which we crossed 
the Andes on the Oroya Railroad back of Lima, and our 
faintness soon passes off. 

The highest part of the Transandine Railroad, yet to 
be built, will include many tunnels. The cars will be taken 
up the steepest part of the mountain by a track like those 
which go up Pikes Peak and Mount Washington. The 
track will have three rails. In addition to the two which 
you usually see on a railroad there will be a third narrow 
rail with many rungs in it, Hke a ladder. Upon this a cog 
wheel attached to the car will move, and the little engine 
made for the purpose will be behind the train instead of in 
front of it. The cars will be pushed, not pulled, up the 
mountains. At atout two miles above the sea there will 
be a tunnel through the mountains, and there will also be 
many snowsheds cut out of the solid rock, through which 
the trains will pass in order that they may not be stopped 
in the winter. 

The road will be of great good to South American 
travelers. We shall see this as we go by the old route 
around the south end of the continent to Buenos Aires. 
The voyage from Valparaiso by the Strait of Magellan 
takes from fourteen to sixteen days. When this road is 
finished passengers will be carried clear across the conti- 
nent in twenty-nine hours. It will make the trip from 
Europe to the west coast of South America very much 
shorter, and travelers from Europe to Australia will come 
to Buenos Aires in about twenty days, then cross South 
America by rail, and take ship at Valparaiso, instead of 
making the long voyage around through the Strait of 
Magellan as they now do. 

On our journey over the road we have fine views of 



122 



CHILE. 



Aconcagua, the highest of the Andes. It is one of the fine 
mountain sights of the world. When the sky is clear it 
can be seen from Valparaiso rising in a great cone high 
above the others of the Chilean Andes, dwarfing all the 

peaks near it except 
Mount Tupungato 
(too - poon-ga'to), 
which is more than 
four miles in height. 
Aconcagua is 
more than 23,900 
feet high, and as we 
look at its snowy 
top we long to climb 
it. If we should 
make the attempt, 
we should probably 
meet snowstorms, 
and we might be 
frozen during the 
cold nights. 

Near the summit 



%'. 




Aconcagua. 



there are cliffs which are hard to scale, and at the top we 
should stand on a square plateau about two hundred feet 
wide, with great masses of fleecy clouds far below us, and 
the mountains stretching away to the east and to the south. 
On one side we could see the pampas of Argentina, and 
on the other, over the narrow band of green which is the 
country of Chile, ninety miles away, would be the shining, 
silvery waters of the Pacific. 

This journey, however, can be made only in the sum- 
mer, and our guides will not allow us to make the attempt. 
We must be satisfied with the magnificent views we have 



SANTIAGO. 123 

had as "we rode through the pass. So we remount our 
mules and slowly climb back down the hills to the railroad. 
Here we take the train for Los Andes, where we change 
cars to the line which goes down the central valley of 
Chile and brings us at last to Santiago. 






XVI. SANTIAGO, THE CAPITAL OF CHILE. 

SANTIAGO (san-tT-a'go) is the capital of Chile. It 
is almost as large as our national capital, and in many 
things like it. Washington is six hours distant from our 
chief seaport, New York. Santiago is about six hours by 
rail from Valparaiso, the chief seaport of Chile. Wash- 
ington Hes in a basin on the banks of the Potomac. San- 
tiago is cut in two by the river Mapo'cho, and the basin 
upon which it is built is walled by the snowy Andes and 
by low mountains w^hich rise one above another from 
grassy plains. 

We have our Capitol Hill. Santiago has its Santa 
Lucia (loo-se'a), a mass of volcanic rocks rising almost 
precipitously in the midst of the city to a height more 
than half that of the Washington Monument. 

Santa Lucia is perhaps the most picturesque hill of any 
city of the world. It has a base of a little more than an 
acre. It is composed of rocks enormous in size and piled 
together in curious shapes. There is earth mixed with 
the rocks, so that trees grow among them. Flowers and 
vines have been planted, and the hill has been made into a 
beautiful park. Its sides are covered with English ivy. 
Tall eucalyptus trees rise out of the crevices of the rocks 
from its base to its summit. It has wonderful ferns, dark 



124 



CHILE. 



caves, and beautiful grottoes in which there are waterfalls, 
making altogether what might be called a hanging garden 
away up there above the city, under the shadow of the 
Andes. 

There are winding driveways and footpaths which go 
round and round the hill to the summit. We walk up one 




Santa Lucia. 



of the paths to take a look over Santiago. It is early 
morning, and the sun is just rising up in the great blue dome 
of the sky. It has caught the tops of the Andes at the 
back of the city, and the snows upon them are shining like 
frosted silver incrusted with diamonds. The foothills in 
the shadow are like blue velvet, and we look at the plains 
away off in the distance, with their rich growth of green. 



SANTIAGO. 



125 



Our eyes now drop to the city below us. Red-tiled 
roofs with trees and bushes growing out of them extend 
about on all sides. Those are the roofs of the Chilean 
capital. The scene is not unlike that we saw from the top 
of our hotel in Lima. The houses are built in the same 
style. They are close to the streets, and consist of rooms 
built around small courts, or patios, in which are the 
gardens. Some of the Santiago houses are of vast size, 
although all are low, few being of more than two stories. 




The Alameda, the chief street of this South American capital." 



See that wide avenue which cuts the city almost in 
halves. That is the Alameda, the chief street of this South 
American capital. It is twice as wide as Pennsylvania 
Avenue in Washington. There are rows of tall poplar 



126 CHILE. 

trees running through it from one end to the other, and 
along each side of the trees are stone aqueducts in which 
streams of mountain water are flowing. 

With our field glasses we see the statues of many Chil- 
ean heroes under the trees, and at every few feet stone 
seats upon which men and women are sitting, enjoying the 
air. Boys are riding on bicycles along the paths in the 
center of the street, and at every few hundred feet there 
are two or three cows with their calves beside them. Each 
of the calves wears a muzzle. The cows are owned by 
women, who milk them from time to time and sell the 
milk warm from the cow to the people who are out taking 
the air. The cows are not tied, but are hobbled by ropes 
about their hind legs. 

Now turn your eyes a little more to the right. There 
is another wide strip of green, with a band of silver run- 
ning through it. That is the river Mapocho, which flows 
through the city. A little more to the left is the race 
course, which is thronged by thousands on Sunday after- 
noons, when the chief races are held. The forest above it 
is Cousiiio (coo-zenYo) Park, where the people drive in 
their carriages every afternoon. 

But let us o^o down from the hill and take a street car 
ride through the city. The seats on the roof of the car 
are the best for sight-seeing, and to ride there cos^s only 
one cent of our money per trip. 

Think of a street car ride for a cent, and that ride 
through Santiago ! We give our fare to the woman con- 
ductor, and are soon whizzing along, as high up as the roofs 
of the one-story houses, through the suburbs and poorer 
parts of the town. Now we pass between the higher 
buildings of the business section. What fine stores they 
are ! They are as good as our stores at home. The show 



SANTIAGO. 



127 



windows have all sorts of beautiful goods, and there are 
several great arcades roofed with glass which have been 
cut through the business blocks from one side to the other. 




" Let us take a street car ride through the city." 

We go by the Moneda, or the mint. It is a great build- 
ing which contains also the home of the president and 
most of the offices of the Chilean government. At the 
door there are soldiers with drawn swords in their hands. 
Later on we see that the president of Chile has a military 
guard of two hundred cavalry which goes with his carriage 
on all state occasions. 

The Chileans are fond of pomp and display. We meet 
policemen with swords at their sides on every street corner, 
and we shall see soldiers drilling in every city and town. 

Chile is a republic after the South American fashion, in 



28 



CHILE. 



which the chief families control the elections and hold most 
of the offices. 

In that building we are now passing the houses of Con- 
gress meet, and those men who are going in are senators 
and deputies who sit there and make laws just as in our 
Congress at home. 

But here we are at the Plaza des Armes, where all the 
cars stop. This is the center of the Chilean capital. That 
big building over there is the cathedral, and the great 




" In that building the houses of Congress meet." 



structure next door is the palace, where the archbishop 
lives. The Roman Catholic religion is the chief religion 
of Chile, and the church has a great deal of property. 
Some of the best business blocks of Santiago belong to it, 



SANTIAGO. 129 

and it has vast estates in the country, upon which fruit and 
wheat and other such things are raised for sale. Those 
ladies dressed all in black, with black shawls on their 
heads, are going to mass. See the little rugs which they 
have with them. They kneel upon them when they pray, 
for many of the churches have no seats, and the stone 
floors are cold. 

Later on we visit the schools. They are much like our 
schools at home, save that the girls and the boys are kept 
in different buildings, and that the children of the lower 
grades all study out loud. Chile has now a good public 
school system. There are schools in every city and vil- 
lage, although four children out of every five are still kept 
at home. • We find Santiago has a national university with 
a thousand students, and that there are also schools for 
the army and navy. 

Indeed, we are surprised at the intelligence of the Chil- 
eans. They have been called the Yankees of South 
America, because they are so bright and enterprising and 
in other ways like us. Many people of the better classes 
speak French and English, some having been educated in 
Europe. In all the cities there are daily newspapers. We 
meet newsboys on almost every street corner, and visit 
large bookstores in the business parts of the city. 

At the post office we learn that millions of letters and 
newspapers go through the mails every year, and when 
we inquire we find that there are telegraph lines to all 
parts of the country, and that the prices for telegrams are 
much lower than we pay at home. There are electric 
lights and electric railroads in the principal Chilean cities. 
Telephones are to be found in all the large towns, and you 
can talk from Santiago to your friends in Valparaiso over 
the telephone, although it is distant six hours by rail. 



130 CHILE. 

During our stay at the capital we are invited to visit the 
homes of some well-to-do Chileans. We are surprised at 
the size of their houses. They are of one or two stories, 
but many of them have forty large rooms, which are fur- 
nished as expensively as the houses of our millionaires. In 
many homes we see fine paintings and statues, and in the 
suburbs we visit mansions with gardens about them, in which 
are lemon and orange trees and all kinds of beautiful flowers. 

But how about the poor? All of the Chileans cannot 
be rich. No, indeed ; they are not. There are poor people 
everywhere. We see them driving carts, and carrying 
goods on their backs through the streets. We shall find 
them living in mud huts in all parts of the country, and if 
we will again mount to the top of the street car we may 
ride through sections of Santiago which are filled with low 
one-story houses in which whole families live in one room. 

Many of the poor people sleep on the floor, and their 
food costs but a few cents a day. They are mostly of the 
mixed race of Spanish and Indians. They do the hard 
work of Chile, and we shall see much of them in our trips 
through the country. 



XVII. A VISIT TO A CHILEAN FARM. 

TO-DAY we start down the great central valley of 
Chile. This valley lies between the main range of 
the Andes and the mountains which border the coast. It 
is in places over a hundred miles wide, and as long as the 
distance from New York to Pittsburg. It is divided into 
vast estates, upon which all sorts of fruits and grains are 
grown, and where cattle and horses are grazed in droves 
of thousands. 



A VISIT TO A FARM. 



131 



There are few countries in the world where farms are so 
large as in Chile, or their owners so rich. We meet men 
who each own thousands of acres, and see many estates 
which are worth more than a million dollars. The wealthier 
farmers live like lords upon their estates or haciendas. 
Farming is profitable in Chile. The country produces 
every year more than twenty-eight million bushels of 
wheat, millions of gallons of wine, and the best horses and 
cattle on the west coast of South America. 

More than half of the people of Chile are engaged 
in farming, but only a few families own land. Most of 
the farms are in this great central valley. They are irri- 




Hay Wagon. 



gated by the streams from the mountains, and are in most 
places cultivated like gardens. The fields are divided by 
canals, along which trees have been planted. Some of the 
estates have stone walls about them, and now and then 



32 



CHILE. 



we see a fence of wire or boards. We look in vain for 
barns and haystacks and farmhouses Hke our own. The 
only buildings are the vast one-story structures of the 
owners and the mud huts of the workmen. Oxen every- 
where take the place of horses and mules. Huge carts 
drawn by oxen with yokes tied to their horns are used 
instead of farm wagons, and the plows are dragged 
through the furrows by the same clumsy beasts. 

Some of the 
more enterprising 
Chileans, how- 
ever, have been in- 
troducing modern 
machinery lately, 
and some of the 
rich farmers now 
have American 
plows, threshers, 
and reapers. 

We visit one of 
the farms, where 
we are the guests 
of the proprietor. 
He has given us 
rooms in his coun- 
try home, whichhe 
occupies only in 
the summer time, 
when he lives on 
his country estate. 
What a lot of 
rooms there are ! There must be a hundred all told, and 
all on the ground floor. The buildings are of one story, 




Chilean Farmer. 



A VISIT TO A FARM. 



133 



with roofs of red tiles, mud walls, and brick floors. They 
surround little green courts and gardens. Groves of 
trees, some of which are one hundred feet high, are 
growing about them. 

There are many other guests at the time of our visit. 
There are about thirty children among them, and when 




"There are horses for all." 

we go out to ride there are horses for all, some of the lit- 
tle ones being tied to the saddles of their ponies to keep 
them from falling, for the children here learn to ride when 
quite young. 

Every child of a rich farmer has its own pony, and we see 
boys and girls between the ages of four and fourteen gallop- 
ing over the fields, holding their seats like men and women. 



134 CHILE. 

The farm Is so large that we might ride all day on the 
roads which go through the fields and not visit the whole. 
The fields are divided by fences of stone and also by 
canals, along which have been planted Lombardy poplars, 
which so shade the road that we do not feel the warm sun. 

We are delighted with the horses. The peons chase 
them on the gallop over the fields to show us how well 
they can run. They are fine riding animals. They are 
trained to a gait much like a pace, but so easy that we 
remain in our saddles for hours without fatigue. The 
horses are directed by pressing the reins against the 
sides of the neck, and not by pulling at the bit, and the 
lines are usually left loose. As a result the horses are 
seldom hard in the mouth. 

The saddles are much heavier than ours. Many of 
them are plated with silver, and ladies and gentlemen 
frequently use silver stirrups. A Chilean often cares 
more to have his horse well dressed than to be well dressed 
himself. His bridle bit is of silver, and his spurs are often 
of the same metal. The spurs used by the peons have 
rowels, or spiked wheels, as big around as a coffee cup. 
Some have wheels four inches in diameter, so that they 
cause great pain if the owner is cruel. 

Later on we go to the cattle. There are great herds 
of fine stock and flocks of fat sheep. The crops in the 
fields are growing luxuriantly, and the vineyards and 
orange orchards are loaded with fruits. 

We ask how such a place is managed, and are told 
that it has a major-domo, or chief, who has overseers 
under him and who organizes his laborers much like an 
army. Each overseer has so many men to take charge 
of, and he tells each man what to do. Books are kept 
showing just how much money is paid out and what is 



A VISIT TO A FARM. 




"There are great herds of fine stock." 

done every day, so that the proprietor knows how well 
each field is paying. 

Indeed, the only poor things on the farm are the rotos, 
or farm workmen. The rotos are the laboring class of 
the country. They are somewhat Hke the Indians we 
saw in Peru and Bolivia. They come of the mixed race 
of Spaniards and Indians, inheriting the bravery of both. 
Peruvian and Bolivian Indians are afraid of their mas- 
ters ; the Chilean rotos are not. They carry knives, and 
the master who should strike one of them would probably 
be stabbed in return. It is said, however, that the rotos 
love their masters. They do not often leave the estates 
upon which they were born. 

Let us enter one of their huts. What a contrast to the 
luxurious city home of the owner! The walls are of mud 
bricks, and the roof is of thatch. The ground forms the 

CARP. S. AM. — 9 



136 



CHILE. 



floor, and In this case the bed of the family. Two boxes 
and a table are the only furniture. The hut has but one 
room, about fifteen feet square, and we are told that a 
family of eight lives in it. 

We wonder how people can exist in such quarters, and 
when we learn what they eat we wonder more. Their 
first meal usually consists of a double handful of toasted 
wheat flour mixed with water into a mush or baked as a 
cake. At noon they have a bowl of hot beans, and for 




"We wonder how people can exist in such quarters." 

supper, or dinner, as they call it, a second bowl of beans, 
to which is added some toasted meal. They seldom eat 
meat, preferring to spend their money for drink. 

As a result of this mode of living many of the roto 
children die. Only the strongest survive, but those who 



THE ARAUCANIANS. 137 

grow up are so strong that four rotos can easily lift a 
piano on their heads and trot away with it. 

The rotos are very polite. When not drunk they are 
kind to their families. They are always ready to help 
one another in trouble. It is difficult to teach them 
habits of thrift, but it is hoped that through the common 
schools, which have recently been introduced into all 
parts of Chile, they will become educated and in time be 
a much better race. 






XVIII. SOUTHERN CHILE AND THE 
ARAUCANIANS. 

WE have left our friends in the country and are again 
on the train. We travel several hundred miles south- 
ward through the great central valley. The snowy Andes 
are still on our left, with smoke rising here and there 
from a volcanic peak. We cross httle rivers and travel 
through vast wheat fields cut up by ditches in which the 
clear water flows. 

What a lot of vineyards there are ! The hills are cov- 
ered with low grapevines, now brown and leafless, for it 
is winter. See that drove of cattle at the side of the road, 
with the rotos on horseback driving the animals this way 
and that. They are rounding up, or counting, the stock 
and branding the young with red-hot irons. There are a 
thousand horses in the next field, and we shall pass other 
cattle and horses between the stations on our way farther 
south. 

What queer trees border the fields! They are lofty 
poplars planted along the irrigating ditches, all leaning 



138 



CHILE. 



north, blown so by the winds, which usually come from 
the south. They look like hedges, and form lines of green 
a hundred feet high running between the great fields. 

What is this broad stream we are crossing? It is the 
Biobio (be-o-be^o), the largest river of Chile. It rises in 
the Andes, not far from the Argentina boundary, and 








Bridge over the Biobio. 



flows across the country, emptying into the Bay of Con- 
cepcion. How wide it is! The steel bridge over which 
we cross is one of the finest in South America; it seems 
to us more than a mile long. 

There are woods on the banks of the Biobio, and from 
now on we shall frequently be in the forests. There are no 
more irrigating ditches, for the rains furnish plenty of w.ater. 



THE ARAUCANIANS. 139 

See the big trees on both sides of the railroad. We 
have at last come into the forest region of Chile, which 
extends from here to the Strait of Magellan. 

The wheat fields we are now passing have been cut out 
of the woods. How large they are ! They look like our 
fields in the new lands of the Northwest. There are 
stumps in them. The houses of the poor are log cabins. 
We see men at work cutting down the trees. Those long 
teams of oxen are dragging out lumber, their big, soft eyes 
looking sadly at us as they painfully pull the heavy loads 
along by their heads. 

Notice the people at the station. How different they 
seem from the rotos we saw in the north! They are 
dark-faced and fierce-looking. They are more warmly 
clad. The men wear ponchos, and many have on high 
boots covered with mud. 

Listen to that group at the corner. The men are talk- 
ing German, and they do not look like Chileans. They 
are German settlers who have come here from Europe to 
farm the land, which the Chilean government sells to im- 
migrants at a very low price. We shall see more Ger- 
mans in the towns of this part of Chile. At Valdivia 
there are large tanneries, in which German workmen 
make fine leather for shipment to Hamburg and Russia. 
The trees about us have good bark for tanning, and Chile 
has so many cattle that hides are cheap. 

But who are the copper-colored people we meet every- 
where ? They wear gorgeous ponchos woven in stripes of 
bright colors. The women have bare arms. Their dresses 
seem to be long blankets wrapped tightly over their chests 
and faUing down to their feet. Some have square earrings 
of silver, half as big as a schoolbook and as thick as one of 
its covers. Others have silver plates on their bosoms, and 



140 



CHILE. 



bands of silver beads about their necks and their ankles. 
They look like Indians, but they are not dressed like our 
Indians at home. 

They are Indians. They are the descendants of the 
famed Araucanians, who inhabited Chile at the time the 
Spaniards first came. They were noted for their bravery, 
and it is said that more Spanish lives were lost in attempts 




"They are the descendants of the fanned Araucanians." 



to conquer them than in all the wars for the conquests of 
Mexico and Peru. Their struggle with the Spaniards 
lasted more than a century, and ended by leaving to the 
Araucanians a great part of southern Chile. 

Since then some of this has been taken away year after 
year, and now the lands of the Araucanians are few. 



THE ARAUCANTANS. 



141 



Alcohol furnished by the whites has made them a nation 
of drunkards, and their bad habits are fast killing them off. 
They are now less in number than when they first fought 
the Spaniards, and they grow fewer and fewer each year. 
The Araucanians have different tribes, commanded by 
chiefs, although many of them live on farms of their own. 
We leave our train and visit one of their homes. The 




" We visit one of their homes." 

house is more like a shed than anything else. It contains 
but one room about twenty feet square, and it has no 
wall at all at the front, the open side being faced away 
from the wind. Skins are drawn over this side when the 
weather is cold. 

Take a look at the roof. It is made of skins and straw 
thatch. The walls are of logs, and the floor is of dirt. 

Let us go in. How black everything is ! You can 
hardly see about you for the dense smoke which comes 
from that fire in the middle of the hut. It is built in a 



14,2 CHILE. 

hole in the ground, and the smoke finds its way out as it 
can. 

The squaw who bends over the fire is cooking the din- 
ner. She has a pot on the coals, in which she is stewing 
mutton and vegetables cut up in small pieces. 

Now the meal is ready, and our host asks us to sit down 
and eat with him. We squat on the floor, and each takes 
a spoon and dips the stew out of the pot. The women of 
the family do not dine with us. The men always eat 
first, the Indian women standing behind them like servants 
and taking what is left. How hot the stew is! It is full 
of red pepper, and it brings the tears to our eyes. 

But who is that woman who has come in during the 
meal and started another fire farther back in the hut ? That 
is our host's other wife. An Araucanian often has more 
than one wife, and in such cases each wife cooks for her- 
self. There are two beds on the different sides of the room^ 
curtained off with fur rugs or blankets. Each bed be- 
longs to a wife, in which she sleeps with her own children 
about her. 

The Araucanians have queer notions of courtship. 
Marriage with them is largely a matter of bargain and sale. 
A father expects a lot of presents of cattle, sheep, or 
horses for his daughter, and until these are promised he 
will not consent to the marriage. 

After all is settled the young man comes some dark 
night to the house of his sweetheart and carries her off. 
The girl usually knows he is coming, and though she may 
want to be married, she pretends she does not. She has 
her friends with her, and when her lover and his friends 
break in, there is a fight between the men and the women. 
The men try to carry off the girl, and the girl and her 
friends use all their powers of resistance. At last the 



THE ARAUCANIANS. 



143 



groom drags the bride out. He swings her upon his horse, 
and jumping behind her, goes off on the gallop, making for 
the nearest woods. The girl's friends follow shrieking 
behind, but the groom of course soon distances them. 
Having reached the forest, he takes his lady love into its 
recesses, and there they spend a few days. After this 
short honeymoon they return to the house of the groom, 
and are then looked upon as married. The husband now 
takes his presents to the father of 
his wife, and the young couple set- 
tle down. 

The women we meet seem to be 
happy. They are kind to their 
children and are fond of them. 
The children laugh and play just 
as our children do, and we laugh 
ourselves when we see the little 
papooses smiling at us out of the 
bundles in which they are tied. 

Almost as soon as one of these 
Indian babies is born it is wrapped 
in a skin or cloth and tied to a 
framework about a yard high and 
so wide that it will easily rest on 
the back of its mother. The mo- 
ther carries it on her back by a 
strap which runs around her head, and when she is tired 
she takes off the strap and stands the papoose against a 
tree or the wall of her hut. She keeps it thus tied up 
until it is able to walk, carrying it with her wherever she 




The mother carries it 
on her back." 



Some of the Indian women are skilled in weaving. 
They spin their own wool and weave their own clothes. 



144 CHILE. 

They make beautiful blankets, weaving them in stripes of 
red, black, and blue. 

We spend a day moving about over their farms, and 
notice that the men at work in the fields are often of the 
mixed race. The Indians employ them to work for them 
rather than labor themselves. 



3>«^< 



XIX. IN THE COAL MINES OF CHILE. 

WE have left the land of the Araucanians and are now 
in the city of Concepcion. It is the chief port of 
southern Chile. It lies a few miles back from Arauco Bay, 
where we expect to get a ship for the Strait of Magellan. 

Concepcion is the greatest commercial city of southern 
Chile, and its people say it will soon be the chief seaport 
of the southern Pacific. It has two excellent harbors, 
Arauco Bay and Talcahuano (tal-ka-wah^no), which are 
near by, and it is so connected by railroads with all parts 
of the country that it has a great trade. The city has 
about fifty thousand people. It is a flat Spanish town 
with a plaza in the center, and streets which cross one 
another at right angles. 

This part of Chile is especially important because it 
contains some of the chief coal fields of the Pacific coast of 
South America. There is but little coal on the coast, and 
coal is brought here by the shipload from Australia and 
England. The coal fields of Chile lie along the ocean 
shore for a distance of almost one hundred miles. The coal 
is not so good as that which is brought from abroad, and 
it must be sold at a lower price. The mines are so close 
to the sea, however, that they can be worked at a profit. 



COAL MINES. 



145 




Street Scene, Concepcion. 



It is for coal that the steamer for the Strait of Magellan 
has stopped in Arauco Bay. She now lies at anchor near 
Lota, with great barges of coal by her side. We see 
sooty-faced rotos standing in the barges and shoveling the 
coal on board. 

The ship is bound for Hamburg. She must force her 
way through the ocean, a distance of about five thousand 
miles, before she can get coal again. It takes a vast deal 
of fuel to make steam for such a big ship. This vessel 
uses more in one day than many families can consume in 
a year, and it will keep the rotos shoveling until night to 
load up. 

As we go on board the captain tells us we have time to 
visit one of the mines. We are tired, and at first think it 



146 



CHILE. 



hardly worth while, until the captain says that the coal 
beds of this region slope from the land down under the 
ocean, and that the coal which they are now shoveling on 
board comes from under the sea. 

This seems very strange. So we call a small boat which 
is near the ship, waiting for passengers, to take us on shore. 

We are soon landed at the entrance to one of the great- 
est of the coal mines. The works above ground consist of 




Entrance to a Coal Mine. 

large buildings situated upon little islands connected with 
the coast by a railroad built upon piers. We tell the 
manager that we wish to visit his mine, and he kindly 
sends a guide with us. 

We are taken to a great shaft or well in which, by a 
steam engine and pulleys, two elevators are raising cars 
filled with coal and lowering empty cars to the bottom. 

We step upon the elevator that is just going down, and 
drop into darkness. Down, down, down we go, until at 
last rays of light shoot up from below us. Our speed 
grows slower, and we stop before a long tunnel with a line 



COAL MINES. 147 

of electric lights extending on and on in front of us, grow- 
ing less and less in size until they fade into stars in the 
distance. 

As we step out of the shaft a train of loaded cars comes 
thundering toward us, and we see that they are moved 
by. an overhead trolley like the electric street cars of some 
of our cities. 

But there is another train going back. Can we get on ? 
Yes ; a special car with seats upon it has been attached to. 
the train for us. We climb upon the platform, and speed 
away over the track at the rate of twenty miles an hour. 
Within a few moments we leave the shore, and are soon 
far out under the bed of the Pacific Ocean. 

We are moving along through a tunnel which has been 
cut out of the great sheet of coal which hes down here 
between the layers of rock. As we go on we pass open- 
ings to the right and to the left. They are the entrances 
to tunnels, which have been made to cut out the coal. 

Think where we are ! We are hundreds of feet down 
under the ocean, and big steamers are floating above us. 
And still it is dry. There is not a drop on our clothes or 
our hats, for the great beds of rock just over the cars are 
such that the water cannot get through. 

As we ride on, now and then a train passes. In the 
tunnels at the sides we see half-naked miners covered with 
dirt, digging out the coal and loading it upon cars. 

What is that boom, boom, boom which sounds as though 
the sea were breaking in through the rocks away at the 
right ? That is from the blasting done to get out the coal. 
There is no danger where we are now, but we must look 
out, for if such an explosion occurred near us it might 
blow us to pieces. 

What a great mine this is ! There are hundreds of men 



148 



CHILE. 



at work in it, and vast quantities of coal are taken out 
every day. 

We return to the shaft on a train with twenty-seven 
cars of coal in front of us, and another train arrives while 
we are waiting to ride to the top. 

Again we are back on the steamer. It is almost ready 
to sail. It has loaded nine hundred tons of coal in the 
last twenty-four hours. Its freight has been packed away 




"In the tunnels we see half-naked miners." 

during its calls at the various ports farther north, and 
within a few moments it will start on its long voyage to 
Europe around through the Strait of Magellan. 

It is a big ship, and it carries a vast deal of freight. 
Below deck are three thousand tons of nitrate of soda, two 
thousand barrels of liquid honey, and great rolls of sole 
leather, all going to Kurope. We have wheat, wine, and 



COAL MINES. 149 

flour for Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, and 
similar freight for Buenos Aires and Montevideo. 

Everything is carefully packed, for we are now going 
into some of the stormiest seas of the world. The ex- 
treme southern end of the continent may be called the 
very home of the winds. About Cape Horn fierce 
winds blow all the year through. There are many storms 
farther north, and seamen are glad when they reach the 
Strait of Magellan, in which the waters are usually quiet. 
It is by the Strait of Magellan that we shall go, and our 
steamer will avoid some of the storms by traveling through 
the narrow channels which run in and out among the moun- 
tainous islands along the west coast. This is the Smythes 
Channel route, the scenery of which is wonderfully grand. 

We are anxious to be off, and are glad when, as evening 
falls, there is a rattling of chains and the anchor is raised. 
We hear the thump, thump, thump of the engines, and as 
we go to bed we are moving out of the smooth waters of 
Arauco Bay into the ocean. 

We awake to find the ship rolling. We have to hold 
to our berths while we dress, and a lurch of the vessel 
often sends us against the walls of our rooms. 

We climb upstairs to the deck, and bracing ourselves 
against the rail look out over the sea. There are white- 
caps everywhere. The waves rise and fall in huge masses. 
They whip the ship, striking its sides with a noise like a 
cannon. Now a great wave dashes over the lower deck, 
and now a still higher one splashes over the top, flooding 
everything and making us run to our cabins. 

When we sit down at dinner there is a network of slats 
upon the table to hold the plates, cups, and other dishes, 
that a lurch of the ship may not send them into our laps. 
We lift our soup plates halfway to our mouths and balance 



150 CHILE. 

them with the roll of the vessel, trying at the same time 
to'* get our spoons between our lips without spilling the 
soup. 

How few of the girls have come down to dinner! They 
are more subject to seasickness than the boys, and prefer 
to stay in bed in their cabins. Some of the boys are sea- 
sick too, and even the bravest of us does not care quite so 
much for his food as he did upon land. 

A day or so later we have grown used to the motion 
and are all upon deck. We enjoy the changes which 
the rough sea and the storms bring every hour. Now 
we are shrouded in mist, and every few minutejs the fog- 
horn blows to warn other ships to keep out of our way. 
Now the fog lifts, and we see high waves roUing about 
on all sides. There is a break in the clouds, and away off 
to the east is a faint line of blue. That is the long, nar- 
row island of Chiloe (che-ld-a') ; the mainland is much 
farther off. We are fortunate in securing a view, for in 
the winter in Chiloe the natives say it rains six days every 
week, and on the seventh the sky is much overcast. In 
the summer there are a few pleasant days, but even then 
the island is half shrouded in mist. 

There is more fog and snow as we sail on southward. 
The sea is still rough, and we cannot safely walk about 
the deck until we enter the Gulf of Penas, from which 
we are to sail inward on our way through Srnythes 
Channel. 

It is only four o'clock when we enter the gulf, but it is 
already quite dark. We are now so far south that in 
winter night begins very early, and the electric lights are 
already turned on. The ship moves very gently, and 
when we go to sleep we feel no more motion than when 
in our own beds at home. 



STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 15I 



XX. IN AND ABOUT THE STRAIT OF 
MAGELLAN. 

WE have been moving slowly all night, and awake to 
find the waves gone. We have left the open Pacific 
and are passing through the series of channels, about four 
hundred miles long, which winds in and out among the 
islands of western Patagonia and will bring us at last to 
the Strait of Magellan. 

The scenes about us are among the grandest of the 
world. There are mountains on all sides. We are sail- 
ing amongst their tops and are in a land of clouds. The 
channel is more like a narrow river than a branch of the 
ocean. It carries us in and out among rocky, grass-clad 
islands. On our left, ragged mountains of curious shapes 
rise almost straight up from the water. Their sides near 
the shore are green, and we see they are matted with moss 
and evergreen trees. Higher up, the green is dusted 
with snow, and at the top there is ice. Some of the peaks 
are half hidden in vapor. Others, nearer our vessel, stand 
out bold and clear — great masses of dark-green velvet 
under a lavender sky. 

As we sail on the scenery changes. The mountains as- 
sume curious shapes, and we imagine pictures in them such 
as you sometimes see in the clouds. There is one that 
looks like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and there is an- 
other which has a striking resemblance to the Sphinx. 
Now the green hills in front of us appear to be climbing 
over one another like a troop of giants playing leapfrog, 
and there farther on they rise upward in cathedrals and 
forts of green a thousand feet high. 
CARP. s. AM. — 10 



152 CHILE. 

Now the sun comes out. It has penetrated that deep 
gorge in the mountains and turned the black water to sil- 
ver. It catches the snow which is dusted over the green 
on the hills, and they are spangled with diamonds. It has 
caught the ice of that glacier and made it an immense 
lump of sapphire ice set in silvery snow. 

Now the clouds are settling down upon the channel and 
hiding the sun. See, there is a wall of them in front of 
it. We are sailing into a snowstorm. A half-hour later 
we shall sail out into the sun again. 

How the sky changes! Now it is blue overhead, with 
fleecy white clouds scattered here and there through it. 
See those cloud masses nestling in the velvety laps of the 
hills and wrapping themselves about the snowy peaks as 
though to warm them. , Now the clouds seem to rise from 
the water, making a wall across the channel as high as 
our ship. Now they come down from the top, and we sail 
out of the dry air into a mist so thick that we can almost 
wash our hands in it as we go through. 

Again we are out of the clouds. The air is clear. The 
sun is bathing the hills with its rays. The ferns, moss, 
and trees shine out in their green luxuriance, and the 
many cascades, some as big as your wrist and others no 
larger than your little finger, which fall down them, are 
threads and cords and ropes of silver. 

These waterfalls come from the glaciers and the moun- 
tain snows. 

Is it not strange that moss and green trees can grow 
so luxuriantly amid such surroundings ? Yes ; but it is 
only on the highest peaks that it is all snow and ice. 
Those trees are evergreens, and they are so close to- 
gether that if we should land we might walk on their 
tops with snowshoes. A bed of moss, waist deep, grows 



STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 1 53 

among them, and great ferns with leaves as long as your 
arms extend out and cover every bare, rocky spot. 

The glaciers which are found on the higher mountains 
extend down into the green, and now and then icebergs 
break off and fill up the channels. During some years 
this voyage is not possible, and, as it is, we make our way 
a part of the journey through fields of glacial ice. It is 
not hke the ice of our rivers and lakes. It is as clear as 
crystal, and green rather than white. 

There is a little iceberg now in front of the ship. It 
is not bigger than a city lot, and it does not extend out of 
the water so high as the deck. It is beautifully green, 
and as the sun catches it it looks like a great emerald rock 
with a top of frosted silver. 

But the machinery is stopping! What is the matter? 
The captain tells us he is going to get some ice from that 
berg for the ship. The sailors are already bending over 
the rails. One of them has a long rope in his hands, with 
a running noose at its end. Now he gives it a throw. 
The coil flies out, and the noose catches on a projection of 
one corner of the iceberg. We have heard of lassoing cat- 
tle, but we have never heard of lassoing an iceberg before. 
Is it not strange ? Yes, but not such a bad way after all. 
The other end of the rope is fastened to a wheel on deck 
moved by our steam engine, and as the wheel turns the 
rope is rolled up and the iceberg dragged close to the ship. 
Now the steward and some of the sailors have taken one 
of the ship's boats and landed upon it. They are break- 
ing off great lumps of ice with crowbars. They wrap 
chains about the ice blocks, and by means of a derrick the 
machinery of the steamer raises the blocks to the deck. 
Some of the blocks weigh many tons, and altogether we 
have got enough ice to last us for the rest of the voyage. 



154 



CHILE. 



But what are those queer-looking boats which are mak- 
ing out from the shore? They look like canoes, and each 
has a fire in its center, about which huddle brown-skinned, 
frowzy-headed men, women, and children, almost naked. 
That man who is paddling the front boat wears little more 
than a vest, and that boat behind contains several children 
who have on no clothes at all. 




Each has a fire in its center.' 



These people are some of the savages who live in these 
waters along the coast of western Patagonia. They are 
called Alacalufes (a-la-ka-loo'fes). They are not like the 
Indians we have in America. They usually live in their 
canoes, although they sometimes sleep upon land in little 
wigwams about as high as your waist. They make the 
wigwams by bending over the branches of small trees and 



STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 



155 



tying them together. They then build a fire in front, and 
crawl into their little houses for the night. 

They seldom sleep in the same place for more than a 
week at a time, for it is much easier to build a new house 
than to go back home if they have wandered very far off. 

The men have bows and arrows to defend themselves. 
The women, as a rule, do the fishing, using lines without 




Alacalufes. 



hooks. A Httle chunk of meat is tied to the end of the 
line, and when the fish has swallowed it the woman jerks 
it into her canoe. 

Their food consists of fish, mussels, and now and then 
a fox, a seal, or an otter. They are fond of whale meat, 
and if they can find a dead whale they will feast upon it 
for weeks. They do not seem to care to have the meat 



156 CHILE. 

fresh, for they cut it in pieces and bury it, digging it up 
for food as long as it lasts. They are fond of tobacco and 
biscuits, and row about our ship, holding out their hands 
and calling out in shrill voices, **Galleta! Galleta! " 
" Tabaco ! Tabaco ! " the two Spanish words for cake and 
tobacco. 

As we look we wonder that they do not take cold. The 
hills on the shore are covered with snow, and we have on 
our heaviest clothing. There is not enough cloth in the 
whole crowd below us to make a full suit for a four-year- 
old child. We pity the poor naked savages, and one of us 
goes to his cabin and gets out a pair of old trousers. He 
throws them down into one of the boats. See, that 
woman has grabbed them. She evidently does not know 
what they are for, as she is tying them around her neck, 
fastening the legs over the chest. Until white people 
came here these savages used no clothes at all. A thick 
coat of whale oil or seal oil was enough to keep out the 
cold. Now they sometimes wear such cast-off things as 
they can get from the steamers, but as a rule they go 
naked. 

The Alacalufes do not know the use of money. We try 
to buy some skins of them, and they sneer and draw back 
at the sight of our silver dollars and bank notes. They 
act differently as we show them some bright cloths and 
beads, and when the steward holds up a butcher knife one 
of the savages is glad to give him two skins in exchange. 
We ask them to come on board, but they are afraid and 
draw back. They are not friendly to strangers, and would 
kill a white man if they could catch one alone. 

We see more savages on our way farther south. We 
cast anchor night after night, for it is too dangerous to 
travel by dark. The scenery grows grander and grander, 



STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. I57 

until at last we steam through a narrow channel the 
mouth of which seems to be blocked by a great island. 
As we come nearer we see that there is a wide waterway 
beyond, and the captain tells us the island is called Desola- 
tion Island, and that we are at last in the Strait of Map-ellan. 



Strait of Magellan. 

Standing upon the deck as our ship turns to the east, we 
look back, and away off in the distance see massive rocks. 
They belong to Cape Pilar, at the entrance to the strait 
from the Pacific. In front of us the strait extends for a 
distance of more than three hundred miles, winding its 
way in and out between the mainland of Patagonia and 
the islands of the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, until 
it opens out into the Atlantic. 

Its scenery, however, is not so grand as that of Smythes 
Channel. In passing through the strait we are at times 



158 



CHILE. 



within a stone's throw of the shore. We sail under great 
mountains, and often in the distance see the high peaks 
of Tierra del Fuego, and of others of the islands of the 
archipelago. At the eastern end the channel is wider. 
The land is low, and the waters almost bound the horizon. 




The Strait of Magellan is one of the commercial high- 
ways of the world. It was discovered in 1520 by a Span- 
ish navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, and has been explored 
by other navigators from time to time. 

For many years, however, the regions about it were 
Httle known, and for a time some supposed that Tierra 



AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 1 59 

del Fuego belonged to another continent which extended 
farther to the south. 

The strait is about three hundred and fifty miles long, 
and it varies in width from two to twenty-four miles. It 
has deep waters all the way through, but it winds about 
so that large saihng vessels, on account of the winds, 
prefer to go about stormy Cape Horn, although this takes 
them many hundred miles out of their way. 

It is different with steamers. They can move as well in 
the calms as when the wind blows. All steamers cross- 
ing the Atlantic between Australia and Europe, and those 
going to and from the east and west coasts of South 
America, pass through the strait. There are indeed so 
many ships that a city has grown up there on the tail end 
of the continent to furnish them coal and other supplies. 
This city is about midway through the strait. It is called 
Punta Arenas, or Sandy Point, and here we shall stay for 
a time. 



XXI. AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 

PUNTA ARENAS is the southernmost city of the 
world. It is so far along on the other side of the 
globe that people who live near our Canadian border would 
have to travel a distance as great as the diameter of the 
earth to get to it. It is at the very end of the continent, 
a thousand miles nearer the south pole than Cape Town, 
and several thousand miles farther south than any city of 
Europe or Asia. 

It is a lonesome city. There is no town of any size 
within a thousand miles of it, and its supplies are brought 
to it by steamers. Great stores of coal and other goods 



i6o 



CHILE. 



are kept in Punta Arenas, for the ships passing through the 
strait often stop here to lay in a new stock of coal and other 
things for the long voyages which they have yet to make. 




Punta Arenas. 



We find English and German ships in the harbor, and 
there is a great steamer from New Zealand at anchor, 
with lighters beside her, and men loading and unloading 
freight. 

We step out of our boat upon a pier, and by a short 
walk are in the heart of the city. What a queer place it 
is! It consists of scattered buildings built on the sides of 
the hills surrounding the harbor. 

It has been cut out of the forest, and it reminds us of the 
frontier towns of our wooded Northwest. See the stumps 
in that vacant lot over there, and look at those trees 
on the hills at the back. Keep to the sidewalks. The 



AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 



I6l 



streets are a mass of black mud, with here and there a 
puddle of water. See that team of oxen dragging its 
heavy cart through the mud. The wheels have sunk in 
to their hubs, and the eyes of the oxen almost pop out as 
they try to pull them on by the yokes tied to their horns. 
What queer-looking houses ! Few of them are of more 
than one story, and all have iron roofs. Many of the 
walls are made of sheets of galvanized iron; others are of 
logs or boards. It is only in the business parts of the 
city that there is stone or brick. None of the smaller 
buildings have chimneys. Those stovepipes sticking out 
of the windows, with elbows upturned, take their places. 





Police Station, Punta Arenas. 



What is that long, low structure of galvanized iron 
whose walls are wrinkled up like a washboard? There 
are soldiers in front, with swords at their sides. That is 



1 62 CHILE. 

the police station. Those soldiers are under the governor 
of the territory of the Magellans, who lives in a big house 
on the other side of the square. He is appointed by the 
president of Chile, and has charge of this city, of the 
greater part of Tierra del Fuego, and of the thousands of 
islands of these far-away seas. 

But what kind of people live away down here at this 
tail end of creation? We can learn from the men we 
see standing in knots on the corners of the streets or pass- 
ing us as we go through the city. The most of them have 
their trousers tucked into their boots. They are roughly 
dressed. Many have long beards, and there are some we 
would not like to meet after dark. 

They come from all parts of the world. They are talk- 
ing together in German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and 
we often hear them speaking English and French. Here 
come two who are chatting in English. We hear the 
words ''sheep" and ''sheep farming." This is one of 
the chief sheep raising parts of South America, and the 
men in high boots are shepherds who have come to Punta 
Arenas to purchase supplies. Some live far north in Pata- 
gonia, and others have come from the sheep farms in 
Tierra del Fuego, across the strait. 

As we go through the business part of the city we see 
that there are also many persons well dressed. The 
stores are quite large, and we learn that Punta Arenas has 
a big trade. Some of its houses are comfortable. It has 
a theater, churches, and schools, and we are surprised at 
the modern improvements which exist in this almost un- 
known part of the globe. 

But we must not leave the Magellans without making 
a tour through the great archipelago south of the strait. 
It is composed of thousands of wooded islands which look 



AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 163 

very small on the map. Many of them are small, but all 
together they contain as much land as Kansas, and sev- 
eral are quite large, Tierra del Fuego proper being as large 
as Ohio. It lies just across the strait from Punta Arenas. 
There is a tugboat which goes there three times a week, 
and upon it we take passage for Port Venir (ve-neer'), a 
little town where the Chilean authorities on the island live. 
From here we make excursions by boat and land about 
this curious country. 

The island of Tierra del Fuego has a rim of mountains 
around the greater part of it. The mountains rise in many 
places almost precipitously from the water, and upon them 
great glaciers hang down, now and then breaking off and 
falling into the sea with a terrible noise. The scenery is 
even grander than that of the strait, but the waters are 
often rough, and we have to move about very slowly. 

At some places we see men washing the sands on the 
shore for gold. There are gold ledges in some parts of 
Tierra del Fuego which run far out into the sea. Here in 
time of storms the gold dust and nuggets are often thrown 
up on the beach. The miners go out as far as they can at 
low tide and gather up the sand, looking carefully over it 
for gold. Some of the gold is found in lumps as big as 
marrowfat peas. The precious metal, however, is difficult 
to get, and the men often work a long time in vain. 

But let us go inland and see something of the interior 
of Tierra del Fuego. What a rich vegetation there is 
everywhere ! We thought it was all snow and ice. We 
imagined it must be the bleakest part of the globe. It is, 
however, far different. It is only on the tops of the 
mountains that the snow remains all the year round, and 
the glaciers which move down their slopes are often 
bedded in green. The mountain slopes, for a thousand 



1 64 CHILE. 

feet up from the water, are covered with trees, ferns, and 
moss so thick that we can hardly crawl through them. 

How big the trees are! Some of the beeches are as 
tall as an eight-story building, and six feet in thickness. 
There are great magnolia trees and other trees somewhat 
like those of our central states. Nearly all of the trees 
are of the evergreen variety, and both trees and grass are 
green here the year round. 

Over the mountains there are great plains of rich grass, 
which in the summer are spotted with wild flowers. There 
are wild gooseberries and wild raspberries. Wild straw- 
berries of large size are found in their season, and there 
are also wild grapes and wild celery. The sheep farmers 
raise cabbages, potatoes, turnips, and peas in their gar- 
dens, and the pastures are so good that the sheep quickly 
grow fat. 

We make our way inland to visit the sheep farms. The 
country in places is swampy and boggy, and as we ride on 
our horses over the plains we go very slowly because of 
the rats. The ground rats are one of the great pests of 
this region. They burrow through the earth, filling it with 
holes like a prairie dog town. They eat so much grass 
that the shepherds are anxious to destroy them. They 
do this by driving herds of cattle over the plains, which 
trample the rats to death. 

We find that the sheep are kept in flocks of one and 
two thousand. Each flock is allotted a piece of land 
about as large as one of our townships, and it is watched 
by its own shepherd on horseback. 

The shepherd has dogs to help him. Most of the dogs 
are Scotch collies, which are very inteUigent. They un- 
derstand their masters almost as well as though they 
understood language. When the shepherd makes a 



AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 1 65 

motion to the front, they run ahead ; if he motions to 
the rear, they come back ; and when Ke raises his hand in 
the air, they stop short. Other motions will send them to 
the right and left, and, in fact, as we see them driving the 
sheep this way and that in response to their master's 
orders, we think that human beings could not do better. 

The shepherds do not feed the sheep. It is their busi- 
ness to see that they do not get lost, to keep off the pan- 
thers and Indians, and to look out for the vultures. The 
sheep are so fat and heavy that when they fall down and 
roll over on their backs they cannot get up. They lie there 
kicking. The vultures of Tierra del Fuego are very cun- 
ning birds, and when they see a sheep in this helpless con- 
dition, they swoop down upon him and pick out his eyes. 
The poor sheep is now blind. The vultures keep picking 
at him, and he soon dies. They now quickly tear off the 
skin and pick every bit of meat from the bones. It is the 
shepherd's duty to be on hand when a sheep falls and to 
help him to his feet again, and also to get him out of the 
bogs if he should fall in. 

Another great danger is from the Indians. Tierra del 
Fuego contains some fierce savages called Onas, who wage 
war with the shepherds and kill them whenever they can. 
They steal in at night and drive off the sheep in flocks of 
five hundred or more, and when they get them far away 
in the forests they have a big feast. The Indian bands 
are not large, and of course they cannot eat so many sheep 
at a time. They kill what are left over, however, and bury 
them in some deep stream or in the ground, leaving them 
there until the chase of the shepherds is over, when they 
go back and^ eat the decayed flesh. 

Are not these curious Indians? Yes; and, strange to 
say, they are among the finest-looking of the Indians of our 



66 



CHILE. 



hemisphere. The men are usually about six feet tall, and 
the wom.en are of about the same height as our women. 
The Onas have high cheekbones, flat noses, and dark eyes. 
Their hair is black and straight. The men singe their 
heads close at the crown, and the women let their hair 
grow so that it hangs down over their shoulders. 




Onas. 



The Ona Indians wear but little clothing, except loose 
skins which they wrap about their bodies. They live 
chiefly on the land, but do not like to stay more than a 
night or two in the same place, for they have an idea that 
the evil spirit is after them, and that they must move on 
or he will catch them. So they have no fixed homes. 
When they stop, they merely make a hole in the ground 
about three feet deep and weave branches over it. Here 



PATAGONIA. 167 

at night they crawl in and cuddle together, with their dogs 
about them for warmth. 

The chief weapons of the Onas are bows and arrows, and 
they get their food by hunting and trapping. 

Before we leave Tierra del Fuego we visit another tribe 
of Indians, which has now become partially civilized. 
This tribe is the Yaghan (ya'gan), which is largely con- 
fined to the southern part of Tierra del Fuego. Its peo- 
ple are much like the Onas, except that they are smaller. 
They get their living from the sea rather than from the 
land. 

The Yaghans eat mollusks, fish, birds, and fungi. They 
cook birds by putting red-hot stones inside of them and 
then placing the birds on the coals. They have an odd 
way of roasting eggs. They break a hole in one end of 
the Ggg and stand it upright in the ashes before the fire, 
turning it round and round to make it cook evenly. 

They are very good hunters, and the women are excel- 
lent fishers, being more fearless in the management of 
their boats and in swimming than the men. 



3XKC 



XXII. IN ARGENTINA— PATAGONIA. 

'HIS morning we are again in Punta Arenas, ready to 
JL start up the eastern side of the continent. We shall 
make our way north through Patagonia, and for the next 
few weeks shall be traveling in Argentina. 

Argentina is one of the richest and most healthful 
countries of South America. It has a vast territory. It 
is greater than the combined areas of our States east of the 
Mississippi river. It is twelve times as large as Great 

CARP. S. AM. — 10 



T' 



l68 ARGENTINA. 

Britain. It extends a long distance from north to south, 
having many different climates and products. In the north 
sugar cane, cocoanuts, and oranges grow ; in the central 
provinces are wheatfields and rich pastures; while in the 
far south the country is almost altogether a sandy desert, 
with a climate somewhat like that of southern California. 

The most of the country is flat. It is composed of 
great plains called pampas, upon which we may travel 
hundreds of miles without seeing a hill. There are only 
a few low mountain ranges. The most of the land is 
covered with pasture. On the western side of the coun- 
try are the lofty Andes, which we saw in Chile. 

Only a small part of the country is settled. There are 
now many more people in the State of New York than in 
Argentina. The population, however, is rapidly increasing. 
Immigrants are coming in from Europe to work in the 
cities or to raise wheat, cattle, and sheep in the country. 
So many people have come that every third man is a 
foreigner. The most of the immigrants are from southern 
Europe. They have come chiefly from Italy and Spain, 
although there are a few English, Germans, and French. 
We shall find the people far different from those of the 
west coast. There are not so many Indians, and there are 
many Italians. 

Our first tour is to be over the rough lands of the far 
south. A coasting ship takes us from Punta Arenas out 
through the east end of the Strait of Magellan. We 
round Cape Virgin, on the northern side of the strait, and 
make our way along the coast, calling at the ports of Pata- 
gonia, and now and then stopping for a short run into the 
interior. 

How bleak and bare everything is! The whole coun- 
try seems to be nothing but sand. The only green spot 



PATAGONIA. 169 

is where we stop at the mouth of the river Chubut to visit 
a colony of Welsh shepherds who have come there to live. 
They have irrigated the land along the river and have rich 
crops of wheat. 

Now we are again on the sea, going north, and now we 
sail up the deep but narrow harbor of Bahia Blanca (ba- 
he'a blan'ca), on the edge of a more fertile part of the 
country. 

Bahia Blanca is the chief port of Argentina on the 
Atlantic. Buenos Aires, it is true, is a much larger city, 
but it is on the Rio de la Plata, two hundred miles inland 
from the ocean. Bahia Blanca is right on the sea. It has 
a good harbor, and the town which has grown up here is 
now accessible to all parts of the country by railroad. 

A railroad has been built from it across the desert 
pampas to the foot of the Andes. It will soon go over the 
Andes through a low pass, and then crossing Chile will end 
at the port of Valdivia, on the Pacific. This will make a 
much shorter route from ocean to ocean than the Trans- 
andine Railroad farther north. 

Let us take the new railroad and ride over the pampas 
to the foot of the Andes, stopping now and then on the 
way. What a curious region it is! We go for miles see- 
ing nothing but sand, with thorny, scrubby bushes grow- 
ing up here and there. There is little grass — so little, 
indeed, that it takes from three to five acres to furnish food 
for one sheep. 

How wild everything is! There is not a fence to be 
seen. There are no barns, no roads, no farms, not any- 
thing living. There is nothing but thorn bushes and sand. 

But stop. What are those yellow animals which are 
galloping away to the right? There must be fifty of 
them. They look like miniature camels. They are bigger 



I70 ARGENTINA. 

than sheep and more beautiful than llamas. See how 
queerly they run. Their gait is more hke short jumps 
than a gallop. What are they? They are guanacos, 
animals of the same family as the llamas, only wild and 
not quite so large. They are often hunted, but are hard 
to shoot. Our guide tells us that they have a keen 
sense of smell and that they can scent a hunter a full mile 
away. Their flesh, he says, is very good eating. It tastes 
much like venison, and when roasted over the coals is 
delicious. The fur is of a tawny yellow color spotted 
with white, and three or four skins sewed together make a 
beautiful rug. 

Now we have left the guanacos far in the rear. We 
are again surrounded by nothing but thorn bushes and 
sand, with spots of white far off to the right. The white 
spots are moving. They are sheep, and that little brown 
thing which runs here and there through them is their 
shepherd on horseback. He is so far off that he looks like 
a pygmy, and his horse seems the size of a dog. 

But what are those gray birds swimming through the 
air over the sand ? They are coming toward us. That 
is a flock of ostriches with outstretched wings. They 
hold their heads far in front, and they fairly skim over the 
ground, their long legs kicking up a dust as they go. 
Some of them run very fast. There is one which has 
started up out of the bushes and is racing the train. We 
are going at a speed of forty miles an hour. The ostrich 
keeps up with us for a few minutes and then drops behind. 

There are wild ostriches through this whole region, and 
had we time we might capture one. The proper way 
to catch ostriches is by means of the bolas. This is a 
long string of tough leather, with an iron ball as big as 
your fist at each end. The hunter rides after the ostriches 



PATAGONIA. 171 

on horseback, and when he gets near them he throws the 
bolas so that the string wraps itself around the legs of the 
ostrich, which falls to the ground. 

Ostriches are not easy to catch. When hunted they 
often squat down and hide their heads in the sand. 
Many people who have not seen these birds in their homes 
think this foolish, but indeed on the desert there could 
be nothing more cunning. The feathers of the ostrich 




" Ostriches are not easy to catch." 

are of about the same color as the bushes of the pam- 
pas, and when one of them squats down and hides his 
head in this way he looks for all the world Hke a bunch of 
gray bush, and the hunter may ride by him without seeing 
anything strange. 

The ostriches of the pampas are not those which furnish 
the feathers aur mothers use in their bonnets. They are 
much smaller, and their feathers are coarser. These 
feathers are used to make feather dusters, and sometimes 



172 



ARGENTINA. 



for feather rugs. The rugs are made of the breasts of 
the young birds, and it would be fine, would it not, if we 
could each take a rug of ostrich breasts home? 

But here we are at a station. What a lonesome place 
for a town, and what a town ! The half-dozen houses are 
gray one-story structures built of sheet iron. The station 
itself is of iron, and that water tank there stands upon a 
framework of iroUo 

The men on the platform are fierce-looking fellows with 
bright-colored ponchos over their shoulders. They all 




But here we are at a station. 



carry knives, and we are told that they are gauchos, or 
cowboys, who herd the cattle and now and then work for 
the sheep farmers at shearing time. We shall see more 
of them as we go farther north. 

Now we are again out on the desert. We have left the 
cars for a time and are alone on plains as dry as the coast 



PATAGONIA. 173 

of Peru. Our cheeks burn and our lips crack under the 
hot sun in the clear, thirsty air. 

What is that cloud coming up? That surely is the 
sign of a storm. Hear the wind. It is blowing with the 
force of a blizzard and driving the cloud toward us. Yes, 
this is a storm, but not a rainstorm. That cloud is now 
between us and the sun. The sun is a great round red 
ball instead of the fiery white furnace it was a moment 
ago. The cloud is not vapor. It is dust and sand. We 
are in the midst of one of the sand storms of the pampas. 
Our guide drags us down into a hole he finds in the desert, 
and draws our blankets over the top. 

Soon the storm is upon us. The sand comes down like 
fine hail. It sifts through the blankets, and we close 
our eyes. Now it is over, and we find we have a heavy 
load to raise when we push back the blankets. How 
queer we all look ! We thought we were white, but the 
sand which has drifted through the blankets has turned us 
all brown. Our nostrils, ears, and mouths are filled with 
dust, and our clothes are covered with sand. 

Such storms are common on the pampas of Patagonia. 
The dust comes in great clouds, and in the cities it 
covers the houses. It is as fine as flour, and closed doors 
and windows will not protect- a house from it. It creeps 
through every crack and crevice, and covers everything 
with dust. Such a storm is much like a thunderstorm at 
home. The dust goes with the w^ind, and it is often fol- 
lowed by a drenching rain. This wets the dust in the air, 
and for a time it really rains mud. If the rain does not 
last long the houses are covered with mud, and it is only 
when the rain is heavy that they are scoured clean. 
These storms sometimes stop the railroad trains, so that 
it takes dust plows and men to clear off the track. 



174 ARGENTINA. 



XXIII. IN ARGENTINA— LIFE ON THE 
PAMPAS. 

ALONG ride by train has brought us back to Bahia 
Blanca. Here we again take the railroad, and are 
soon traveling through some of the great pasture lands of 
the world. Some parts of the country are fenced with 
barbed wire, but the most of it is just as nature made it 
— vast pampas which extend on and on until they lose 
themselves in the sky. 

Now we see a flock of two thousand sheep browsing on 
the rich grass. Their white wool shines out among the 
dark-green bushes. We hear the shrill baa, baa, baa, of 
the lambs and the coarser voices of the old sheep as we 
go by. 

Over there on the horizon is a drove of horses, mere 
brown specks against the blue sky, and between us and 
them a long train of huge carts, each hauled by eight 
oxen, is dragging its weary way over the plain. Those 
carts are filled with wool and hides, and the men who are 
walking beside them are driving the loads to the station. 

In these pastures is found the chief wealth of Argen- 
tina. We might travel thousands of miles back and 
forth over the country and, with the exception of the 
rude huts of the herdsmen and now and then the larger 
buildings of some rich farmer, we should see little else 
than great flocks of sheep and droves of cattle and horses. 

Argentina has tens of millions of sheep. Sheep raising 
is by far its most important industry. It has indeed so 
many sheep that if they were all divided equally each 
man, woman, and child in the country would have at least 



LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 1 75 



mm 




" — vast pampas which extend on and on until they 
lose themselves in the sky." 

twenty- five. The sheep are kept in large flocks and are 
watched by shepherds on horseback. They feed out of 
doors the year round, for there is good grass here in all 
seasons. 

We see neither barns nor haystacks as we ride over the 
pampas. The inhabitants, as a rule, do not raise hay or 
com for their stock. It is only necessary to let the ani- 
mals graze, to protect the sheep from the vultures, and to 
give them a bit of salt now and then. 

The sheep are shorn once every year. The wool is cut 
off and tied up in bales much as we bale cotton. It usu- 
ally goes first to Buenos Aires, where it is transferred to 
the steamers and sent across the Atlantic to Europe. 

Very few sheep are sold here for mutton. They are so 
plentiful that there is no great demand for their meat, and 
in the cities you can buy chops for four cents a pound. 
Within a few years, however, factories have been built to 
freeze mutton for shipment to Europe, where it will sell 
for from three to five times as much. In these factories 



176 ARGENTINA. 

the sheep are killed and dressed just as they are for our 
markets. They are then hung up in rooms which by cer- 
tain chemical processes are made so cold that the meat 
soon freezes stiff. In this state it will keep fresh. It is 
now wrapped up in white cloths and carried to the refrig- 
erators of the steamers which take it to Europe. As soon 
as it lands there it is thawed out and placed on the 
butchers' counters for sale. It then looks just like freshly 
killed mutton, and indeed it is said that when cooked it 
tastes like fresh mutton. 

But let us leave the train and ride on horseback over 
the pampas. Here we are at the home of a shepherd. 
What a rude hut it is! Its walls are poles covered with 
mud, and its roof is straw thatch. We have to stoop as 
we enter the door, and we look about in vain for chairs for 
our party. The hut is scantily furnished. Much of the 
cooking is done on the ground outside. The oven is that 
round mound of mud which looks like a beehive. 

The shepherd is an Italian. He lives with his little 
family all alone here, away out on the plain. He spends 
his day riding about among the sheep, and at night drives 
them into that corral near the hut. He works for a rich 
farmer who owns thousands of acres of land and more than 
one hundred thousand sheep. 

The shepherd tells us that the estate, or estancia, is so 
large that we might ride all day in one direction and not 
come to its end. We learn later on that much of the 
land of Argentina is in large tracts. Land is not sold 
by the acre, but by the square league, which contains 
more than six thousand acres. 

But suppose we go farther on over the pampas. We 
gallop for miles, now riding where the turf is soft, fresh, and 
green, and now where the grass is gray, dead, and coarse. 



LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 



17: 



This is the natural grass of the pampas. The green 
turf has been pastured year after year. When so used 
the coarse grass disappears after a time, and a more tender 
and a richer grass springs up. 

But see that smoke away off to the right. The flames 
are rolhng up from the earth, and the dense white smoke 
is blowing toward us. Is that a prairie fire down here 
on the pampas? Don't be alarmed. There is no danger. 




" Now they have caught one with a lasso.' 



The men who have lighted the fire have burned a strip 
around their fields so that it will not go beyond them. 
They are burning off the coarse grass and thorn bushes. 
After such a burning a more tender vegetation springs up. 
The owners say it makes the land better to burn off the 
grass once every few years. 

But we have now left the sheep farm and are passing 



173 



ARGENTINA. 



through a large estate devoted to stock raising. We 
might ride eighty miles in a straight line and not get 
across it. It has great droves of cattle, and we pass herds 
of thousands of horses. There is one now where they are 
branding the animals. They have driven the horses into 
an inclosure fenced round by stakes. Now they have 
caught one with a lasso. See, they are driving him about 
in a circle. Now he is tired, and they pull him down to 
the ground. One man sits on his head, and another holds 
him tight by a rope fastened about his front leg, while a 
third seizes a red-hot iron from a fire near by and burns 
a mark on his side. That brand is the brand of the owner, 
and by it he can claim the horse if it gets lost. 




Drying Horse Hides. 



In that inclosure farther over, they are killing horses and 
skinning them. There are hundreds of fresh horse hides 
tied to stakes out there in the sun. They are stretched 
out to dry. In Argentina horses are raised largely for 



LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 



179 



it is said that a beggar sometimes follows 



their hides. The animals are so cheap that you can buy 
one for a very few dollars. 

It is not uncom.mon here for a man to give a horse to 
his friend. Even the poor natives own one or more 
horses. Indeed 
his trade going 
from one farm 
to another rid- 
ing upon his 
own horse, so 
that there real- 
ly is a country 
where beggars 
go on horse- 
back. 

But look at 
those strange 
men who are 
branding the 
horses. They 
are dark-faced, 
and they seem to be very fierce. What a queer dress they 
have ! They do not wear trousers, but have blankets 
wrapped around their waists, the ends being tucked 
through between the legs and fastened to their belts. 
See, there is one standing at the side looking on. He 
has white drawers which extend down below his blanket 
and are edged with lace. Many of the others wear slouch 
hats. Each carries a whip, and all have knives in their belts. 

Those are the gauchos, or, as we might call them, the 
cowboys of the pampas. They are the descendants of 
the Spaniards and Indians. They act as the herdsmen 
of the pampas. They do not like steady work, except 







i 






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H^m 




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rm^H^^I 


^^H 


Igjl^^j^^ 


jB 


^wB 


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11 


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A Gaucho. 



i8o 



ARGENTINA. 



such as can be done upon horseback, and they are always 
ready to ride over the plains to watch or drive cattle. 

They are very good men when they are sober, but when 
drunk are by no means backward in using their knives. 
They are men of no education, and are not very civilized. 




Gaucho Hut. 



We enter one of their houses as we pass by on our ride 
over the pampas. We are in a mud hut fifteen feet 
square and so low that we have to stoop down to come 
through the door. The floor is of earth. Those dry 
bullock skulls scattered about are the seats, and a rude 
table, a box, and a chair comprise the rest of the furniture. 

The cooking is done upon a fire outside the door. The 
food is usually beef, and it is roasted upon a spit over the 
coals. As the meat cooks, the gaucho's wife bastes it with 
the juice, which she catches in a pan as it falls. 

After the meat is done it is cut off in large slices, being 



LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 



I»I 



usually eaten without plates or forks. Each one at the 
meal takes a slice in his hand. He puts one end of it 
between his teeth, and pulling out the shce as far as he 
can, he draws his knife across it within a sixteenth of an 
inch of his nose. When his first bite is chewed up he 
takes another in the same way, so that he really has no 
need of a fork. 

A favorite dish is carne concuero (carina con-kwa'ro), 
or meat cooked in the skin. The meat is cut from the 
flesh of the animal, with the skin upon it. It is wrapped 
up tightly, so that the skin keeps in the juices when it is 
roasted over the coals. We try it ourselves and like it. 



«>'nif ,m' i« -itt <m' .isri vi 



rv "-^i.»iniii!rm><jrui 




Cowboys at Breakfast. 



1 82 ARGENTINA. 



XXIV. IN THE GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD 
LANDS OF SOUTH AMERICA. 

TT T'E shall travel to-day through some of the chief food 
VV lands of the world. Argentina has many different 
industries. It grows almost all kinds of crops, and we can 
describe only a few of them. We pass cattle and horses 
on our way back to the railroad, and see more sheep as 
we go on to the capital, Buenos Aires. 

Here we change cars for the north, and ride for two 
days through the rich lands along the Parana river. We 
travel a long time by train through wheatfields and pas- 
tures. Every day the weather grows warmer, and at last 
we come into a land where there are oranges and lemons, 
and other tropical fruits. We are now in the province of 
Tucuman, in the northern part of the republic. 

How different it is from the desert where we traveled 
after we left Punta Arenas! All nature is green, for the 
soil is rich and there is plenty of rain. We pass groves 
of tall palm trees, their green fanlike leaves rustling in the 
wind. We visit sugar plantations where gangs of men 
and women are cutting the cane. They chop it off close 
to the ground, and load it on ox carts to be hauled to the 
factory. We follow a cart and watch the cane stalks as 
they are thrown between steel rollers which squeeze out 
the juice, and farther on we see the juice boiled down into 
sugar. 

We are now surrounded by mountains. There are 
streams everywhere. Some are almost dry now, for it is 
winter. In summer the rain comes down in great sheets 
and turns the streams to torrents. We can see how they 



GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 



183 




" Gangs of men and women are cutting the cane. 



have cut deep gorges here and there through the hills. 
They often flood large tracts of land. 

We see more hills as we leave Tucuman, going west 
ward and southward through Argentina. The country is 
rolhng. We are in the foothills of the Andes. There are 
forests of fine woods, and farther south we enter a land of 
great vineyards. 

See how the vines cover the hills. They extend on 
and on for miles. The western part of Argentina is a 
rich wine raising country. Trainloads of grapes are 
shipped from here to Buenos Aires and to other parts of 
the republic. When the grapes are ripe, men, women, 
and children walk through the vineyards, gathering them 
in baskets and carrying them to the wine presses. 

CARP. S. AM. — 12 



1 84 



ARGENTINA. 



Look up at the mountains to the west. Those are the 
snowcapped Andes. This town we are coming into now 
is the Httle city of Mendoza, and that snowy peak just 
beyond is Aconcagua, which we saw in Chile. Mendoza 
is a station on the Transandine Railroad, and that iron 




"We enter a land of great vineyards. 



track which climbs up the mountains is the eastern part of 
the line which is to stretch from ocean to ocean, and over 
the western part of which we had such a pleasant journey 
in Chile some weeks ago. 

There is a good railroad from here to Buenos Aires, and 
we can, in fact, travel by railroad to almost any part of 
the republic. We decide to go back to the wheat lands 
by the way of Cor'dova, and stop there for a few hours 
on the way. 



GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 1 85 

Have you ever heard of Cordova? It is a town well 
known in the history of South America. It was for two 
hundred years one of the chief centers of education and 
culture on this continent, and it had a university seven 
years before our Pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth 
Rock. Cordova has a large university now. It is also a 
business center, so that a stay in it will give us some idea 
of a small city in Argentina. 

We take a carriage at the station and drive to the 
plaza. Cordova is much like the cities of Chile in that 
it is laid out in square blocks, with its streets crossing one 
another at right angles. The houses are almost all of one 
story. They are painted in the brightest of colors, and 
nearly all have iron bars over their windows, making us 
think of a jail. 

Back of these bars we see women and girls standing or 
sitting. It seems to us as though the girls were caged in. 
This is so to a certain extent in all towns in Argentina. 
Young women and girls seldom go alone on the street. 
They are not allowed to associate with young men or 
boys until they are married, and a young man who should 
stop at a window and chat would be told he had better 
move on. 

We drive on through the wide Avenida General Paz, 
admiring the statues at its ends, and then out among the 
shabby huts of the suburbs, where the poor people live. 

Here all is dirty and squalid, but the sky is bright blue, 
and the gorgeous sunlight has given Cordova an atmo- 
sphere Hke that of the Orient. Its outskirts remind trav- 
elers of Cairo, and the Moorish architecture of the churches 
and the better class houses is like that of southern Spain. 

Now we are again in the city. What queer names the 
streets have ! Some are taken from the noted days of the 



1 86 



ARGENTINA. 



history of Argentina. Here is one called Twenty-fifth of 
May Street. We turn the corner and go into the street 
of the Eighteenth of July, and wonder if we shall not find 
farther on a street named *' Week after Next." 

We stop at the market. It is in a hollow square sur- 
rounded by rose-colored one-story buildings containing the 
meat stalls. The red beef and mutton hang down from 



WIR|fl|pilfil|P 







"We stop at the market." 



hooks under dirty white awnings. There are no scales. 
Those women with the black shawls around their heads, 
who are buying, pay for the meat by the chunk. 

The market court is filled with carts which have come 
in from the farms. On the ground sit dark-faced women 
with vegetables about them, which they sell by the pile. 



GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 



87 



What is that squealing outside the market? It sounds 
Hke a pig in the hands of a butcher. They surely cannot 
kill hogs here in the midst of the city. It is only the 
creaking of a farm cart which is bringing wheat to the 
market. There it comes through the door. It has wheels 
eight feet in height, with hubs as big around as your waist, 
and an axle as thick as a telegraph pole. 




'■ It has wheels eight feet in height. 



The cart has an arched cover of reeds over its bed. The 
skins which have been sewed to the top are put there to 
keep the rain off the wheat. Such farm carts take the 
place of farm wagons throughout Argentina. They look 
very rude, but each cart will hold several tons — so much, 
indeed, that teams of twelve oxen are often hitched to one 
cart. The owner of the cart is that dark-faced man in the 
poncho, and his wife is the woman in the calico dress who 
is now climbing out. 

But let us leave Cordova and ride on the railroad into 
the wheat lands. We reach them within a few hours 



88 



ARGENTINA. 



after leaving the city. The best wheat region of Argen- 
tina Hes in the Parana basin, within a hundred miles of 
both banks of the river, for the soil which it has brought 
down from the uplands is exceedingly rich. The wheat 
lands are all together so large that if they could be put into 
one block they would make a wheatfield five times the 
size of New York, or six times that of Ohio. This tract 
in good seasons produces far more wheat than the people 
can use, and the wheat exports are sometimes so large 
that they compete with our wheat in the markets of 
Europe, and as a result we receive much lower prices. 

Our farmers, indeed, might have to stop exporting 
wheat did not Argentina have many droughts, when the 
wheat will not grow, and also in good seasons terrible in- 
vasions of locusts which sometimes eat up the crops. 





Locusts and Their Eggs. 



The locusts come down in swarms of millions from the 
warm lands of southern Brazil. There are so many of 
them at times that they shut out the sunhght Hke a storm, 
cloud. They alight on everything green and eat up all as 
they go. They eat the leaves of the trees and also the 
fruit. They are especially fond of green wheat. A 
swarm of them will chew up a wheatfield in a night, and 



GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 1 89 

when, they come in vast numbers, as they sometimes do 
year after year, the crops of the farmers are ruined. They 
lay their eggs in the holes in the ground, and these hatch 
out thousands more. The people never know when they 
are coming, and plant on and on, hoping they may be 
able to harvest their crops. 

We pity the farmers as we watch them at work. It is 
spring, and they are plowing the fields. We ride for hours 
through vast tracts of brown soil upon which dark-faced 
men are guiding their oxen this way and that through the 
furrows. Here one is sowing the seed, scattering it by 
hand over the land, and in the next field oxen are drag- 
ging harrows and brush over the clods to cover the grain. 

Now we are passing farms where the wheat has been 
sown for some time. As far as we can see there is nothing 
but the emerald green of the fresh sprouting grain. A 
little later on, as harvest time comes, this vast sea of 
emerald will change to a billowy ocean of gold. There 
will be wheat on all sides, and the yellow waves will roll on 
and on until at last they lose themselves in the blue sky. 

Then there will be reapers and mowers moving over the 
fields, some drawn by horses, some by oxen, cutting the 
grain. There will be steam thrashers puffing away as they 
shell the wheat out, and there will be great ox carts, like 
those we saw in the markets of Cordova, with teams of 
eight and twelve oxen hauling the great loads of bags to 
the train. 

At that time, were we here, we might find it very slow 
traveling. There is so much wheat that all the freight 
cars of the country are needed to carry it to Rosario, the 
chief port of the Parana, and to Buenos Aires for ship- 
ment to Europe. The tracks are so crowded with wheat 
cars that the passenger trains are sometimes kept back to 



I90 



ARGENTINA. 



let them go by. We should then find stacks of bags 
awaiting shipment at the stations, many of the stacks being 
covered with canvas to protect the wheat from the rain. 
Why do not the farmers store the wheat in barns ? We 
can easily see as we ride on and on through the fields- 
There are no barns anywhere ! No feed is stored, and 
V the stock is seldom kept under cover. Even the work- 
rng horses and oxen are turned out to graze. There are 




" There will be steam thrashers puffing away." 

no farm buildings except the little mud huts thatched 
with straw in which the small farmers live. The huts are 
so small that there is no place in them for storing wheat. 
The result is that the grain is sold as soon as it is 
thrashed, and the farmer must take what he can get. 

Most of the grain is shipped to Europe soon after har- 
vest. This is along in January and February, in the mid- 
dle of our winter. There is so much wheat, however, that 



GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 



191 



some is exported all the year round. We can see how it 
is handled by watching the loading of steamers at Rosario. 
Rosario is one of the chief wheat ports of Argentina. 
It is situated on the south bank of the Parana river, 
about three hundred miles by water from Buenos Aires! 
It is of about the size of Indianapolis. It is built right 
on the banks of • 

the river, which is 
here so deep that 
great ocean steam- 
ers can sail through 
the Rio de la Plata 
and the Parana up 
to it. 

Rosario is built 
upon a bluff so high 
that it is above the 
masts of the steam- 
ers on the water be- 
low. All along, a 
little back of the 
edge of the bluff, 
warehouses of gray 
galvanized iron have 
been constructed. 
In these the wheat 
is stored as it is 
brought from the 
fields. 

Now, in front of each warehouse, there is a long chute, 
or trough, made of wood or iron, extending down to the 
water. These troughs are in sections, so that they can 
be shortened or lengthened at will, and so that when con- 




Loading a Steamer, Rosario. 



192 ARGENTINA. 

nected they make a continuous chute running from the 
bktff right into the hold of the steamer. 

The bags of wheat are carried by men from the ware- 
houses and thrown into the chute. Gravity makes them 
descend, and they bounce up and down as they fly into 
the steamer, making us think of an army of gigantic yellow 
mice galloping down into the hold. At some places the 
railroad tracks run close to the bluff, so that the wheat 
bags can be taken from the cars direct to the chutes. 



XXV. IN BUENOS AIRES. 

IT is a night's ride by train from Rosario to Buenos Aires. 
We go to bed in the sleeper as the cars move out of 
the station, and when we awake we are in the capital of 
Argentina. We step out into a railroad station, as large 
almost as our best stations at home, and walk under a 
long glass-covered roof to the front door. What a lot 
of carriages there are, and how their drivers yell at us in 
Spanish as we come down the steps! We choose one, 
and are soon dashing through one long street after 
another, turning corner after corner, until we reach our 
hotel. 

As we go we see that Buenos Aires is a large city. 
Its size grows upon us as we ride through it day after 
day. It is indeed the largest city on the South Ameri- 
can continent. It has already nearly a million inhabi- 
tants, and it increases in population, it is said, about one 
hundred thousand a year. It grows fast because it is 
the chief city of Argentina. It is situated on the Rio de 
la Plata, at just the point where steamers from Europe can 



BUENOS AIRES. 



193 



most easily land their goods, and from where the wool, 
hides, meat, and other things raised here can be easily 
loaded to go across the ocean. 

Buenos Aires is the place where the most important 
business of Argentina is done. It is the capital and has 
the principal officials. It has nearly all the factories that 



1- 


?TLZ^''"'J!!-f' ^-^"^ -■ 




^^^mM^ 




K 


^^^^hI 



Buenos Aires. 

supply Argentina with goods. It ships most of the wool 
and other exports. Indeed, it is one of the largest produce 
markets in the world. 

In Buenos Aires the richest of the people of Argentina 
live, only now and then going out to their vast estates in 
the country. Here also are the homes and business 
houses of the great merchants. Here are the chief col- 
leges, the great daily newspapers, the finest churches, 



194 



ARGENTINA. 



and, in fact, all things which are of supreme importance 
in Argentina. 

But what kind of people live in this city? When we 
hear them talk we think them all Spanish. There are 
Spanish signs over the stores, and many of the people 
speak nothing else. Buenos Aires is by far the largest 
Spanish-speaking city of the world, being more than twice 
as large as Madrid, the largest city of Spain. Still, the 
most of its people are foreigners. Not more than one 
fifth of them were born in the country. There are more 
Italians in Buenos Aires than natives of Argentina, and 
there are at least one hundred thousand who have come 
here from Spain. 

See that group of dark-faced men with ruddy complex- 
ions on the opposite corner. They wear short jackets and 
full skirts, and their trousers are held up by sashes tied 




Basques. 



BUENOS AIRES. 



195 



about their waists. They have little round caps on their 
heads, and many of them carry long ropes. You might 
think they were hangmen, but even Buenos Aires could 
not give work for so many executioners. Those men are 
Basques. They come from northern Spain, and are here 




Street Scene. 

(because they can find plenty of work and good wages. 
They are porters, and their ropes are to tie on the boxes 
or bags which they carry on their backs through the 
streets. 

The masons who are building that house over the way 
are Itahans. The Italians are the mechanics of the city, 
and we shall also find them peddhng onions, fish, and all 
kinds of goods from house to house. They are the news- 
boys of Buenos Aires, and also the bootblacks. They 
own the grocery stores, and there are some rich Italian 
bankers and traders. There are many large banks man- 



196 ARGENTINA. 

aged by the English, and some of the biggest stores are 
owned by the Germans. 

But let us go farther on into the business section. 
Here we are in the Plaza de Mayo. What a beautiful 
park, and how large are the houses about it! That great 
building on one side of the square is the cathedral. There 
is a crowd of women in black gowns, with black shawls 
over their heads, going to mass. The building covefs 
more than an acre, and it will hold, it is said, nine thousand 
people. It is the chief church of the city ; for Argentina 
is a Catholic country, and Buenos Aires is said to be the 
largest Catholic city of the world. Catholicism is the re- 
ligion of the state, and it is at the cathedral that the presi- 
dent attends mass. 

That building just above the cathedral contains the 
courts of the city, and on the opposite side is the govern- 
ment house, where the president of Argentina has his offices, 
and where the most of the government business is done. 
Argentina has a president and Congress just as we have, 
and its people are supposed to choose their own officers, 
although elections are often unfair. 

Butletus go out to Barraccas. "Barraccas" means ware- 
houses, and this is the name of that part of the city where 
the most of the wool, wheat, and meat are prepared for 
shipment to Europe. We stand on the corner and wait 
for the car. We hear a horn blown in the distance. The 
sound of it grows louder and louder, and we soon see that 
one end of the horn is in the mouth of the car driver, and 
that he gives a blast as a warning at every street corner. 

As the car stops we climb in. We are carried through 
narrow streets for more than two miles, when we reach an 
enormous brick building on the banks of the Riachuelo 
river, which here flows into the Rio de la Plata. The 



BUENOS AIRES. 



197 




Some are filled with wool." 



building is that of the Mercado Central des Frutos, the 
largest wholesale produce market, under one roof, in the 
world. It covers many acres, and in it millions of pounds 
of wool are handled each year. It is so built that the cars 
can come into the market, and the wool and wheat can be 
unloaded right upon the floors. Shiploads of wool sail up 
to its doors, and carts and wagons loaded with wool and 
grain are driven in from all parts of the country. We 
spend a long time going through one immense room after 
another. Some are filled with wool, and in others there 
are so many bags of wheat and corn that we have not time 
to count them. 

On our way back we call at one of the big city mar- 
kets. Here we see that the food which these people eat 
is quite as good as our own. They have all sorts of 
meats, fish, and vegetables. There are huge pears from 
near Buenos Aires, and oranges and pineapples which 



198 



ARGENTINA. 



have come down on the steamer from Paraguay. There 
are grapes from the foothills of the Andes, and peaches 
by the bushel from the islands of the Parana river. 
Peach trees grow so rapidly in this part of the world 

that they are often raised 
for fuel, and there are so 
many peaches in some 
places that they are 
thrown to the pigs. 

We stop at the stalls 
where chickens are sold. 
The feathers have been 
pulled from the chickens, 
except the tail feathers. 
These show what the 
color of each chicken was 
before it was plucked. Why 
these feathers are left I 
do not know. A similar 
custom prevails in South 
China, where dog meat is sold to be cooked. A bit of the 
dog's hair is always left on the tail ; but this is because the 
Chinese think the flesh of black dogs the best and most 
fitted to put a brave spirit into the eater. 

We meet many chicken peddlers on leaving the market. 
They are starting out with live chickens, which they will 
sell from house to house through the city. The chickens 
are in wicker crates hung over the back of a horse, and we 
see that all peddling is done by men on horseback or on 
foot. 

Now and then we pass a peddler who is driving a flock 
of turkeys before him. The fowls are for sale. If you 
pick out 'one the peddler will catch it for you. 




'^'■3' 



Chicken Peddler 



BUENOS AIRES. 



199 




Armadillo 



Have you ever eaten young armadillo ? Its meat tastes 
like spring chicken, and the people of Argentina are so 
fond of it that they eat a thousand armadillos a month. 
The armadillo is a four-legged animal, with a shell Hke a 
turtle and a lit- 
tle head like a 
pig. It bur- 
rows in the 
earth, and sel- 
dom goes out 
of its hole ex- 
cept at night. 
It eats fruit and 
roots, and some- 
times small in- 
sects. Its flesh is white and quite tender, and when we 
taste it at one of the restaurants we find it delicious. 

But it is now five o'clock, and we must go for a walk on 
the Calle Florida. This is the fashionable shopping street 
of the city. It is lined with the stores of jewelers, con- 
fectioners, milliners, and tailors, and at this time of day 
the fashionable people come here to see and be seen. 

The street is just wide enough for a line of carriages 
to move up one side of it while another line goes down 
the other. We find the Florida filled with carriages. 
There are hundreds of horses prancing along. There are 
fine carriages containing well-dressed women and men. 
The carriages drive slowly up and back, while the people 
within sit and stare at their neighbors. 

Upon the sidewalks are knots of young men who have 
come here for their afternoon outing, to chat with one 
another and look at the crowd. 

We see more fine turnouts on Thursday afternoon, when 

CARP. S. AM. — 13 



200 



ARGENTINA. 



we take a drive out by the magnificent residences along 
the Avenue Alvear to Palermo Park. 

This park is perhaps the finest in all South America. 
It covers many acres, and in it there are long avenues 
of magnificent palms, forest trees of all kinds, running 




Palermo Park. 



streams, and winding lakes. During the afternoons of 
Sunday and Thursday it is filled with people. There are 
hundreds of carriages and thousands of foot passengers 
riding and walking under the palms. There are gayly 
dressed children playing upon the grass, and boys rowing 
about in boats upon the lakes. 



MONTEVIDEO. 20I 



XXVI. URUGUAY-IN MONTEVIDEO, THE 
PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA. 

A/V"^ ^^&i" our journeys in a new country this morning. 

> V We have left Buenos Aires, and after travehng all 
night on a great river steamer are now casting anchor in 
the harbor of Montevideo. The day is just dawning, and 
the lights on the shore shine out through the mist, mark- 
ing the shape of the city and harbor. 

The bay is like a horseshoe six miles in length and is 
so large that many hundreds of vessels could be anchored 
in it at one time. Of late years, however, the mud brought 
down from the highlands through the Rio de la Plata has 
so filled it up that the largest ships must now stay several 
miles from the shore. 

We have to wait some time on the ship for the health 
officers and inspectors of customs. While we wait, let me 
give you a bird's-eye view of Uruguay. It is the small- 
est of the South American republics. There are single 
states in Argentina which surpass it in size, and it could 
easily be lost in Brazil. It is only about as large as Mis- 
souri. It has, all told, not more people than Boston. 

We can see something of its shape on the map, but if we 
could fly over or perhaps ride above it on the winged horse 
Pegasus, we might know it much better. We should then 
see that, with the exception of a few low mountain ranges, 
the country is a waving sheet of billowy green, with so 
many streams of silvery water flowing through it that they 
make a network upon it like the veins of a leaf. We should 
see that it has rich soil, and that cattle and sheep are scat- 
tered over it in quite as large flocks as those of Argentina. 



202 



URUGUAY, 



If we looked closely we might see that the houses of 
the farmers are like the mud huts we saw on the pampas, 

and that the aspects 
of nature are about 
the same. 

The climate of 
Uruguay is delight- 
ful. The country 
is as near the equa- 
tor as Florida is, 
but the weather is 
not so hot in the 
summer, nor so cold 
in the winter. The 
seasons are the op- 
posite of ours, so 
that when we have 
autumn Uruguay 
has spring, and 
when we put on our 
furs the Uruguayan 
ladies are using 
their fans. 

In such a flight 
we should notice 
the long coast line 
of the country, and 
might see great 
steamboats sailing 
up the Uruguay 
river, and smaller 
boats on other streams in the interior. We should see 
but few large towns, and should notice that all railroad 




MONTEVIDEO. 



203 



trains, steamboats, and carts are moving to and from the 
capital, the city of Montevideo, which we are about to 
explore. 

We take a boat and ride to the wharves, noticing as we 
go the Cerro, or hill, at the left, from which the city was 
named. Montevideo means '* I see the mountain." The 
Cerro is the mountain. It is not quite so high as the 
Washington Monument, but the land is so flat all about it 




Montevideo. 



that from the sea It can readily be distinguished far off. 
There is a white tower upon it, and at night you can see 
the revolving light in it twenty-five miles out from land. 
But here we are at the wharves. We step out and wend 
our way through the city. What large buildings are these 
all about us! They surpass those of any city we have 
yet seen on our tour. Montevideo is well built, and its 
people are proud of its great business blocks. 



204 



URUGUAY. 



How clean the streets are ! This comes from the long 
tongue of rock upon which Montevideo is built. The 
rock extends from the Cerro out into the bay. It slopes 
so on all sides that the streets are all up hill and down, 
and every rain washes them clean. Montevideo is a very 
healthful city, and fewer people die in it, in proportion to 
its size, than in any other city of the world. 




We take a boat and ride to the wharves. 



Get out of the way of those carts! They are each 
drawn by two or three mules harnessed abreast. How 
huge and clumsy they look! Each cart has a bed made 
of poles ; it has sides of poles curved upward and tied to- 
gether with thongs. Look at the wheels. They are enor- 
mous. Hear the din they make as they rattle over the 
cobblestone streets. There are other carts coming up this 
side street. It is queer they do not use wagons. No ; not 
when you learn that all vehicles in Montevideo are taxed 



MONTEVIDEO. 



205 



by the number of wheels, and that a four-wheeled wagon 
would have to pay twice as much as a cart. 

Montevideo has very good street cars. The streets of 
the city run so up hill and down that few cabs are used. 
We can go anywhere on the street cars. We ride upon 
them by two-story and three-story houses, now passing 




"We visit the Soils Theater," 

great plazas, or squares, filled with trees. We go out into 
the country, past beautiful houses with gardens about 
them, and come back to the city by a new line. 

We visit the Solis Theater. It is one of the largest in 
South America, covering two acres and having seats for 
three thousand people. We go to the cathedral, and spend 
some time in visiting the national museum and the pub- 



206 



URUGUAY. 



lie libraries. Montevideo has a university. It has good 
common schools, and we learn that public schools are being 
established in all parts of the country. At present, how- 
ever, only about one child in ten goes to school, and the 
most of the common people cannot read or write. 

In the schools the children study out loud. We can 
tell by the din that a school is going on long before we 
come to the block in which it is. 









^ 


r 


, ...^ 




i-^l 




wn^m^^a 


\-'S'-''^':^|l 


^^^^^m^. 





Cathedral and Plaza. 



Montevideo has many rich people who have vast estates 
throughout the country. They live upon these in the 
summer and spend their winters in their great houses in 
Montevideo. We stay some weeks in Uruguay and have 
opportunities to visit well-to-do famihes. Their houses 
are grand, but exceedingly cold. The floors are marble, 
and the ceilings are often upheld by marble columns im- 
ported from Italy. There are no fires, for the people 



MONTEVIDEO. 207 

believe artificial heat unhealthful, and so they do not have 
stoves, furnaces, or steam-heating pipes. The result is 
that when it is cold the women receive their callers sitting 
in their furs, with their feet on hot- water bottles, and the 
men often wear their overcoats when at the table for dinner. 

Some of the queerest customs of these people are those 
of courtship and marriage. Young women and men can- 
not walk together by themselves, as they do in our coun- 
try. Indeed, a Uruguay girl must never go out on the 
street unless she has her mother, her aunt, or a servant 
girl with her, and should her boy friends call they would 
meet the whole family. 

When a young man begins to court a young woman he 
does not come into her house, but stands for days in front 
of the building, and stares at her window. In a short time 
she sees him staring. She at once knows what he means. 
Then perhaps she opens the window and stares in return. 

The two are not supposed to talk to each other, but they 
stand thus staring for hours at ar time. This is what is 
called in Montevideo "playing the dragon," the young 
man being the dragon. I will not say that never a wink 
nor a whisper passes between the two young people, but 
if so it must be while no one is looking. After a time the 
young man goes to the father of the young woman, and 
tells him he wishes to call at the house with a view to a 
proposal of marriage. If he gets the father's consent, he 
comes and spends the evening with his sweetheart and her 
family, getting her as far off from the rest as he can. He 
is not allowed to see her alone until they are married. 

This custom seems»odd to us, and we often slyly laugh 
in our sleeves when we see a young man dressed in his 
best parading up and down in front of a window. We do 
not dare to laugh openly, for this might make the young 



208 URUGUAY. 

man angry, and If he became jealous we might have to 
fight him straightway. 

From Montevideo we take some trips through the 
country. We visit the larger towns by railroad and 
travel some time on the Uruguay river. Here we see the 
great meat-extract establishments. The largest of them 
are at Fray Bentos, where hundreds of thousands of cattle 
are yearly killed for meat-extract. The lean meat is 
stewed in warm water, being skimmed again and again of 
the fat. After a long time the stew thickens into a Hquid 
like thin molasses. When it cools, it thickens. It is now 
put up in tin boxes and sent to Hamburg, Germany, where 
it is repacked in little porcelain jars and shipped all over 
the world. Many of us have tasted beef tea made from 
this Uruguay meat. It is found in our drug stores, and 
is often prescribed by the doctors for sick people. 

Not far from Fray Bentos we find factories in which 
dried or jerked beef is made. Such meat is much liked 
by the South American people, and is taken by the ship- 
load from Uruguay to Brazil and the West India Islands. 
The animals are killed, and the meat is stripped from their 
bodies in sheets and dried in the sun in such a way that it 
will not spoil, however long it is kept. 



3>«^C 



XXVII. UP THE RIO DE LA PLATA SYSTEM 
INTO THE HEART OF SOUTH AMERICA. 

WE are again upon shipboard this morning. We have 
left Montevideo and are steaming through the Rio de 
la Plata, upon whose tributaries we shall go into the heart 
of the South American continent. 



HEART OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



209 



What a big stream it is! At Montevideo we could 
hardly see the opposite shore. It is wide all the way to 
Buenos Aires, and it is many miles wide where it is formed 
by the junction of the Uruguay and Parana rivers, still 
farther up. The Rio de la Plata, in fact, is more like a 
muddy fresh-water bay or arm of the sea than a river. It 
is almost two hundred miles long, and where it unites with 
the ocean it is more than one hundred miles wide. 




Rio de la Plata. 



How muddy it is ! The water looks like pea soup. It 
is so dirty that w^e hesitate to get into our bath, and when 
we let off the water a thick coat of mud remains in the tub. 
It is so thick that our feet leave marks in it as deep as 
those which so frightened Robinson Crusoe on the shore 
of the desert island. The Rio de )a Plata brings down a 
vast amount of earth washings from the mountains. It 
contains so much that if it could all be put upon wagons 



2IO URUGUAY. 

twenty thousand horses all pulling at once could not haul 
away the load of one hour. So much mud drops to the 
bottom that the river is fast filHng up. It is already diffi- 
cult for the big ocean steamers to reach Buenos Aires, and 
the people are now talking of a system of jetties like that 
of the Mississippi to deepen the river. 

The Rio de la Plata system drains a basin about half as 
large as the whole United States. If we could view it 
from above we should see that it is of the shape of a great 
horseshoe, with the opening toward the Atlantic. The 
highlands of Brazil and the Andes form the upper rim and 
back of the shoe, while the slightly sloping plains of Pata- 
gonia are the rim on the south. Within this shoe lie the 
best lands of Argentina, the whole of Uruguay and Para- 
guay, and large portions of Peru and Bolivia. 

In cHmate this basin is hke that of the Mississippi river 
basin reversed, the greatest tributaries of the system com- 
ing from the hot lands of Brazil and Bolivia, where palms 
and rubber trees grow, and its mouth lying in the cooler 
countries of wheatfields and pastures in which we have 
lately been traveling. Almost everywhere its climate is 
healthful. Its northern parts have weather much like that 
of Louisiana or Florida, and the south has much the same 
climate as our middle States. Our ship stops at Buenos 
Aires for passengers and freight, and we then start on our 
way to the great Parana. 

We soon pass the mouth of the Uruguay river, and just 
before entering the Parana river we sail about the large 
island of Martin Gracia (gra-se^a). We can see with our 
glasses the fort upon its shore. There are boys in soldier 
uniforms marching about it. They belong to the Argen- 
tina Naval School, which has been established there, and 
the men who are drilling are soldiers used to defend the 



HEART OF SOUTH AMERICA. 211 

great fortifications. Martin Gracia is called the Gibraltar 
of Argentina, for it guards the chief entrance to the Parana 
river. It is one of the historic points of this region. It was 
here that the Spanish explorers who first visited Uruguay 
stopped for a time. During their stay their pilot, Martin 
Gracia, died, and they gave the island his name as a monu- 
ment. As we sail by it we remember that we, too, are 
on an exploring expedition. We are entering waters 
which were discovered by the white man who, with his 
father John, was the first to set foot upon the soil of the 
North American continent. This was Sebastian Cabot, 
who, only thirty-four years after Columbus landed in 
America, came here and entered the Parana river. He 
traveled up that part of the Parana through which we 
shall go, and from it went into the Paraguay river over 
the very same way we shall sail. 

I venture, however, that Sebastian Cabot, if he could be 
with us to-day, would think our boat more wonderful than 
anything he saw on his tour. His ship was not one tenth 
as large. It was a small sailing vessel, and it took months 
for it to go up the river. He would wonder how we could 
move without sails. Steam as a motive power was not 
then discovered, and he would not at first understand how 
we could make the great paddle wheels at the side of the 
ship move it onward so fast that the voyage can be made 
in six days. 

Cabot's ship was probably Hghted with oil or tallow. 
How he would wonder at our electric globes and the other 
curious things which have been invented since then ! 

He would probably stare when he sat down to dinner, 
and might think that our meals are rather good for ex- 
plorers. Here, for instance, is our bill of fare for one din- 
ner: ox-tail soup, Bologna sausage with potato salad, 



212 



URUGUAY. 



boiled beef, fish caught in the Parana river, curried chicken 
and rice, beefsteak and potatoes, cheese, guava jelly, 
English walnuts, almonds and raisins, oranges and coflfee. 
Passing Martin Gracia, we sail for several hundred miles 
through the delta of the Parana. The river for a day's 
ride north of its mouth is about twenty miles wide. It has 




On the Parana. 

many channels, and it is dotted with islands, some cov- 
ered with forests of peach trees and others cultivated by 
the Italians, who raise vegetables for the Buenos Aires 
markets. 

All of the islands are low, and many have curious 
houses upon them. We are passing some now. They 
look like sheds. They are raised upon piles, the first floor 
being reached by long ladders. This is that the people 
may keep out of the way of the floods, for the winds and 
the tides sometimes roll great waves in from the ocean. 

After traveling for a day among such islands, we reach 
Rosario. We steam by the great ocean ships which we 
saw from the bluff after our tour of the wheatfields. 
They are still loading wheat, and thousands of yellow 
bags are bobbing up and down as they gallop over the 
chutes. There are big flour mills and grain elevators at 



HEART OF SOUTH AMERICA. 213 

Santa Fe and other towns farther up, and much of the 
shipping of the Parana river is devoted to carrying grain. 

As we go on we are more and more dehghted. The 
Parana is picturesque, although the lowest parts of it have 
no very grand scenery. It is wider than the Mississippi. 
It seems at times like a great inland sea, the shores being 
so far apart that we cannot always see both banks at once. 

This is largely due to the islands, of which the Parana 
has so many that they have never been counted. It prob- 
ably has more islands than any other river of the world. In 
our journey we are always sailing in and out among them, 
now coming close to the high bluffs of the mainland, and 
now passing through narrow channels so near to the 
islands that we can almost catch hold of the willows and 
feathery grasses which hang over and mirror themselves 
in the water. 

But some of the grassy islands are moving. That great 
mass of green over there is going past our steamer on its 
way down the river almost as fast as our engine is pushing 
us up the stream. See, the waves from the ship are 
making the island move up and down. It is a sheet of 
billowy green rising and falling with every wave. That is 
a floating island ! There are many such in the Parana 
river. They are masses of weeds, flowers, and turf which 
the floods have torn from their foundations in the high- 
lands and are carrying down to the sea. Some are so firm 
that they will support a man, and during the floods 
jaguars, snakes, and peccaries are carried upon them to the 
islands about Buenos Aires. 

Now we have left the middle of the stream and are pass- 
ing close to the great bluffs on the mainland. We are try- 
ing to keep away from that sand bar which is being built 
up by the river. In places the banks are being torn down, 



214 URUGUAY. 

and we have all about us examples of how the waters aid 
in transforming the earth. 

We can see that the rivers are indeed the masons of the 
gods, and as we look about us can realize what a master 
workman this mighty Parana is. The waters which are 
sweeping past us, going faster than a man can walk, are 
loaded with mud. They have been carrying down mud 
for ages, and those islands beyond us have been built up 
from the soil they have dropped. 

The streams in the Andes are now gathering dirt for 
this river, and its waters are carrying it down to the low- 
lands. That island of a hundred acres of green over there 
is made of earth washings which have been brought from 
the highlands. Some of its particles were washed from the 
roots of palm trees in Brazil, some came from coflfee 
plantations a thousand miles farther north, and some were 
perhaps loosened by the Indians we saw mining gold in 
the wilds of the Bolivian Andes. That bluff at our right 
is one hundred feet high. See how its earth strata, or 
layers, are piled up one on top of the other Hke those of a 
jelly cake. Those layers have been deposited there dur- 
ing the ages, and as we steam on we can see some of the 
lands of the future rising slowly under our eyes. 

Notice that spot at the right of the vessel. I mean 
just over there where the water is rippling. That is a 
sand bar. Next month it will be a sandy island. Next 
year it will be covered with grass, and trees will sprout up, 
sending- down, as they grow, their long, fibrous roots to hold 
in the soil. During every flood old Mother Parana will 
spread a new coat of soil over her, island child, and soon 
will appear one of the forest-grown patches which dot the 
vast bed of the river. 

Is not nature a wonderful thing? We realize it more 



HEART OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



215 



at every turn of the wheel. The land and the sky seem 
to change every hour, and the scenes above us are even 
more glorious than those below. The sunsets are gor- 
geous. They paint the clouds with all the hues of the rain- 
bow, and make a golden canopy over the dark-blue 
Parana. We get up before day to see the sun rise. As 
it comes up its rays strike the dewdrops upon the feathery 
grasses of the islands, and myriads of diamonds flash from 
the emerald fields. At night both the heavens and the 
earth are clad in the glorious moonlight of the semi- 
tropics. We linger late upon deck, picking out the South- 
ern Cross from among the stars, and wondering at the 
remarkable brilliancy of the Milky Way. 




Corrientes. 



As we travel on toward the equator we see many more 
trees ; the islands are covered with them. The grasses are 
more luxuriant, and here and there are bunches of ferny 
bamboo. Now and then there is a palm tree shading 
a house on the mainland, and oranges and lemons are 



2l6 URUGUAY. 

brought to the steamer at some of the ports. We stop at 
many small towns of one-story buildings with thatched 
huts about them. The houses are roofed with red tiles, 
and there is always a church spire rising high above the 
rest of the town. 

After three days we reach the city of Corrien^tes. It is 
quite a large town for this part of the world. It has 
about thirty thousand people, and looks very imposing in 
its position on the high east bank of the Parana river. It 
is close to the junction of the Parana and the Paraguay 
rivers, and at its landing we see steamers starting up the 
Parana, upon which they can sail farther on to the north- 
east for hundreds of miles. 

Our own ship, however, is on its way to Asuncion 
(a-soon-se-on'),in Paraguay, and as Paraguay is the country 
we are next to explore, we leave the Parana, and steam 
up the Paraguay river. 

The water here is not so muddy as that through which 
we have been traveling. The stream is not so wide. It 
is, however, a mighty river, as deep as the Mississippi, and 
about eighteen hundred miles long. It is navigable for 
steamers for more than a thousand miles above Corrientes, 
and small boats can go upon it far into Brazil. 

We get our first sight of Paraguay soon after we leave 
Corrientes. That land on the east bank belongs to it, and 
those villages with orange trees about them are filled with 
Paraguayan people. 

As we sail onward we find the country wilder. Now 
and then we go for miles with virgin forests on both sides 
of us. The steamer moves this way and that in follow- 
ing the channel, and we are often close to the banks. We 
hear parrots screaming at us from the woods, and with 
the glass we now and then catch sight of a monkey grin- 



HEART OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



217 



ning out of the leaves of a tree. There are birds of beau- 
tiful plumage, and a flock of wild ducks now and then 
rises from the lagoons which we pass at every few miles. 




Landing at Asuncion. 

We get out our guns and take a shot at the birds. We 
shoot at the alligators on the shore, and now and then one 
scuds through the water to swim out of the way of the 
boat, diving down as we pass. 

The west bank of the river is especially wild. This is a 
part of a vast wilderness known as the Chaco, the lower 
part of which belongs to Argentina, and the upper to Para- 
guay. In the Chaco there are miles and miles of virgin 
forest. The most of it is inhabited by savages, and we 
are told that we could not travel a mile from the banks of 
the river without meeting jaguars, monkeys, and wild hogs. 

We stop now and then at a Paraguayan town, and finally 
land at the wharves of Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. 

CARP. S. AM. — 14 



2l8 PARAGUAY. 



XXVIIL IN PARAGUAY. 

PARAGUAY lies about as far inland from the Atlantic 
Ocean as the State of Illinois, but by our winding way 
up the rivers we have journeyed as great a distance as 
from New York to Omaha. We are now about midway 
on the west border of Paraguay proper, and just opposite 
the lower corner of a vast wilderness known as the Para- 
guayan Chaco. 

Paraguay is composed of two divisions, Paraguay 
proper and the Chaco. Paraguay proper corresponds to 
our States. The Chaco is more like our Territories. It 
is the " wild west " of Paraguay. It is inhabited only by 
savage Indians and wild beasts. It is a vast territory lying 
west of the Paraguay river and north of the Pilcomayo 
river, being bounded on the north by Bolivia. The Chaco 
has large forests, extensive swamps, and some good lands. 
It is almost all in a state of nature, having been little 
explored. 

Paraguay proper is the settled part of the country. It 
has all the cities and towns, and is the only part in which 
civilized people live. It lies east of the Paraguay river 
and north of the Parana river, being located somewhat as 
Illinois is in our own country, the Parana corresponding to 
the Ohio river, and the Paraguay to the Mississippi. 

Paraguay proper is about as large as Illinois, and it is 
much like it in character. The country is beautifully roll- 
ing, with numerous streams upon which the crops can be 
moved to the ports of the Parana and Paraguay rivers. It 
has great pastures and large tracts of rich soil. There are 
one or two low mountain ranges running through the 



PARAGUAY. 219 

country. These mountains are covered with forests, and 
they add greatly to the beauty of the scenery. 

The cHmate and products are semitropical. There are 
small plantations of tobacco, manioc, and sugar cane. 
There are orange trees everywhere, and clumps of palm 
trees upon the great plains. 

The people of Paraguay are few. They are composed of 
the whites, of the mixed race, and of pure Indians. Those 
of the white and mixed races number only about six 
hundred thousand, and there are about one hundred and 
thirty thousand savage Indians. Among the civilized 
people there are more of the mixed race than of the pure 
whites. The Indians w^ho inhabited Paraguay when the 
Spaniards came were more civilized than most of the other 
tribes of the continent, and the Spaniards intermarried 
with them. Many of their sons and daughters also mar- 
ried Indians, and we find that nearly all the Paraguay 
people have Indian blood in their veins. 

The Indians whom they married were the Guaranis 
(gwa-ra-nes'), and to-day the Guarani language is more 
used by the common people than the Spanish. We shall 
take with us a guide who understands Guarani to act as 
interpreter during our tour, for we may be in places where 
the people cannot speak Spanish. 

Paraguay has no large cities. The largest by far is 
Asuncion, which we are about to explore. It contains 
only thirty thousand people. Villa Rica(verya re^ca), about 
one hundred miles to the east, is next in size. It has per- 
haps eight thousand. Other large towns are Villa Con- 
cepcion, two hundred and fifty miles north of Asuncion, on 
the Paraguay river, and Villa Encarnacion, in the south, on 
the north bank of the Parana river. Smaller towns and 
numerous villages are scattered about over the country. 



220 



PARAGUAY. 



The city of Asuncion is the business, social, and finan- 
cial center, and has always been the principal town of 
Paraguay. As we go through it we shall find many 
modern improvements. It has banks, telegraphs, colleges, 
and newspapers. It has good houses, several large 
churches, and many buildings mossy with age. 

Asuncion is one of the oldest cities of our hemisphere. 
Babies born in it had grown up and become gray-haired 
men and women before Captain John Smith started James- 




Street in Asuncion. 

town. It was long one of the chief centers of civilization 
of South America, and for some years was more important 
than either Buenos Aires or Montevideo. 

In 1811 Paraguay declared itself independent. For 
many years afterwards it was governed by unscrupulous 
rulers who oppressed the people cruelly. 



PARAGUAY. 221 

Finally, one of the rulers, named Lopez, finding it so 
easy to oppress his own people, thought he could dictate 
as he pleased to the nations about him. He offended 
Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, and they combined and 
declared war upon him. They marched with their armies 
against the Paraguayans, and although the latter fought 
bravely they could not withstand such a large force. The 
war lasted five years, and in the end nearly all the men 
and many of the women of Paraguay perished. The tyrant 
Lopez was killed. 

Then Paraguay sued for peace. She lost much of her 
territory and became very poor. Asuncion had been 
almost destroyed, large parts of the country had been laid 
desolate, and of the people there were httle more than 
women and children left. 

Indeed, so many of the men were killed that to-day 
there are more women than men in the country. We 
notice this as we walk from the wharves up into Asuncion. 
It is early morning, and the streets are filled with women 
going to and from market. How Hke ghosts they look! 
Each is clad in white, with a long cotton sheet wrapped 
about her head, so that only her dark face shows. The 
most of them are barefooted, and they make no noise as 
they walk spiritlike through the streets. 

There is one coming toward us who has a great jar upon 
her head and a load of firewood in her arms. She is 
walking rapidly, and her dark legs show out below her 
white skirts halfway to the knees. Behind her comes 
another white-sheeted figure, upon whose head is a great 
basket of oranges with a chunk of raw meat on top. The 
basket is perfectly balanced, and she walks along without 
touching her burden. There are other women carrying 
all sorts of things in the same way — bags of vegetables, 



222 



PARAGUAY. 



pans of meat, bundles of firewood; In fact, they carry 
everything on their heads. It seems no trouble to keep 

the loads steady, for as we go 
by they do not lift up their 
hands, and take no pains to 
avoid being jostled. 

We pass more women on 
our way to the market house, 
going through the chief busi- 
ness streets. The city is not 
large, and it takes but a short 
time to learn its most curious 
features. It is laid out in the 
Spanish style, the streets cross- 
ing one another at right angles, 
with a park or a plaza here and 
there. But few of the streets 
are paved. The others have a 
roadbed of deep sand as red as 
brick dust. This is the color of 
the best soil of Paraguay. 
The streets are wide, but the town is so up hill and 
down that there are but few carriages. The carts rattle 
as they go over the stones. Many of them are hauled by 
three mules abreast, which are driven at such a pace that 
we jump up on the sidewalk to get out of the way. 

What curious houses ! They are almost all of one story, 
built close to the sidewalk, in blocks, so that they form 
solid walls running from street to street. All have iron- 
barred windows, and the houses are painted each a differ- 
ent color. Here is one of sky blue, the next is rose pink, 
and over the way is one of pale yellow. 

Here comes a policeman. He is dressed in a blue 




"There is one coming 
toward us." 



PARAGUAY, 



223 



uniform, with a long sword at his side. If he should arrest 
us he would take us into a red jail, and on the way we 
should pass the li- ^- ^ 

lac- colored build- ^ 7~^^ 

ing in which Con- 
gress meets. We 
might see the 
cream-tinted pal- 
ace from which 
thepresident rules, 
and should go by 
houses of every 
color. 

Let us take a 
look at the busi- 
ness part of the 
town. The stores 
are not large, but 
they are stocked 
with goods from all parts of the world. That building on 
the corner is the chief hotel of the country. It was once 
a palace of Lopez, the tyrant. 

The market house is a block farther on. It looks more 
like a monastery than a market. It is a great one-story 
building, running about a hollow square, with a low roof 
which extends out upon all sides, over the cloisters or 
wide porches which run round it. It is painted Indian 
red, and the color forms a bright background for the 
strange figures about it. People are buying and selling 
at the meat stalls in the building. The court inside is 
filled with tables and benches, where all kinds of things 
Paraguayan are sold. 

Let us stop in the porches and look about us. Every 




"They carry everything on their heads." 



224 



PARAGUAY. 



part of the market is swarming with women. There are 
scores of women sitting on the bricks, with their wares 
spread out before them. Others stand behind the butcher 
counters, and with knives and saws cut up great chunks of 
meat for their customers. Others have vegetables, laces, 
and jewelry, which they beseech you to buy. 

What a chatter they make as they bargain ! There are 
no scales and no measures. See this vegetable woman 




"The lilac-colored building in which Congress meets." 

who is squatting almost under our feet. She has a stock 
of green peas which she has arranged in piles on the 
bricks. There is about a pint in each pile, and the cus- 
tomer buys by eye measure. Each purchaser brings a 
cloth with her to wrap up what she buys, for the market 
women furnish neither paper nor string. 

In going through the market we can learn much con- 
cerning the chief products of Paraguay. We see tobacco 



PARAGUAY. 



225 



sold everywhere, and we shall find that Paraguay raises 
much tobacco for export. The greater part of the tobacco, 
however, is consumed at home. Three fourths of the 
women we meet have cigars in their mouths. Both buyers 
and sellers are smoking like chimneys. Som^e of the mar- 




Market, Asuncion. 

ket women are chewing cigars, and others are rolling up leaf 
tobacco to smoke. We see small girls smoking and chew- 
ing, and boys of six and eight years smoke without stint. 
Among other things sold in large quantities are ma- 
nioc and oranges. Manioc is a root which in Paraguay 
takes the place of both potatoes and wheat as food. Its 
roots grow in great bunches, each root about the size of 
a carrot. There are two varieties. One of these is 
boiled or roasted much Hke a potato ; the other must first 
be ground and squeezed to take out a poisonous juice 
which it has in it. After this it becomes a flour, and is 
eaten in soup, in stews, and in other ways. 



226 PARAGUAY. 



XXIX. PARAGUAY— A TRIP INTO THE 
INTERIOR. 

TO-DAY we are traveling through the interior of 
Paraguay. We have taken our seats in one of the 
first-class cars of the railroad, which runs one hundred 
miles east from Asuncion to Villa Rica, and thence goes 
southward toward the Parana river. The engineer has 
thrown a lot of wood into the furnace, but the cars go so 
slowly that we are able to see much of the country as we 
pass through. 

Leaving Asuncion, we go by the villas of rich Para- 
guayans, pass the agricultural college, where the boys are 
playing under the palm trees, and then on into great pas- 
tures bordered with bushy woods and spotted here and 
there with small clumps of trees. 

The lands are as rich as our prairies, and resemble them, 
save that thickets and groves everywhere give shade for 
the cattle. We are in a vast sea of grass, which seems to 
be flowing in and out among islands of woods. In the 
summer the woods are fragrant and the plains are covered 
with most beautiful flowers. Paraguay has miles of such 
pastures, and upon them two million cattle are feeding. 

There is a big herd now on our left. There are men on 
horseback moving to and fro among the beasts and driv- 
ing them this way and that. They are probably picking 
out the fat beeves for shipment, or they may be about to 
brand the stock. 

A little farther ofif to the right we see a village. We 
pass villages at every few miles, and there are many small 
towns at which the train stops. The most of the people of 



TRIP INTO THE INTERIOR. 



227 



Paraguay live in villages. Their houses are merely thatched 
huts with walls made of woven poles covered with mud. 

We can easily visit one while the train waits at a station. 
What a rude hut it is! It is composed of two parts, a 
room about fifteen feet square and a shed. The shed has 
no walls. It is merely an extension of the thatched roof 
which covers the closed room, and is upheld by poles. 

The people live in the shed during the day. There are 
hammocks hung to the poles, and men and women are 




What a rude hut it is ! ' 



sitting in them. Naked babies and half-naked children 
play about on the dirt floor. The climate is warm in the 
summer, and it is the breeze which sweeps through the 
shed that makes life endurable. 

There is but little furniture. We see only a table and 
one or two chairs. The chief object of interest is a log 
stood upon end. It is about as high as your waist ; there 



228 



PARAGUAY. 



is a hole dug out of its top. Before the log a woman is 
standing. She has a heavy stick or club in her hand, 
which she is lifting up and dropping on some corn which 
she has put in the hole. Such logs are the grist mills of 
Paraguay. In them the women pound their corn and 
manioc to flour. 

We find the people hospitable. They Hve simply, but 

do not seem to care 
for anything except 
something to eat, a 
little Hquor to drink, 
and enough cigars to 
smoke all the day 
through. 

Now we are again 
on the train, mov- 
ing out through the 
fields. What are those 
odd little hills which 
stand out like small 
haycocks among the 
screen orass? There 
are hundredsof them, 
dark-red mounds, 
spotting the fields and 
looking as though 
they had been thrown up by man. Now we are passing 
some mounds as high as our waists, and now we have 
come to a field in which there are thousands which hardly 
reach to our knees. What can they be? They look Hke 
nothing but dirt. They are dirt. They are the mounds 
of ant cities. 

Paraguay has hundreds of millions of ants, which throw 




Indian Children, 



TRIP INTO THE INTERIOR. 229 

up such mounds all over the country. In some places 
there are so many that they destroy the pastures, and 
when the people wish to cultivate the ground they first 
must fight the ants. Every hill must be dug up, for there 
are as many ants below as above ground. After being 
dug up the hills are set on fire. They burn easily, and 
in this way the ants are destroyed. 

The ants sometimes burrow into the houses, and a 
woman m^ay awake in the morning to find a great mound 
of dirt on her parlor floor, the ants having decided to build 
a village there. She sweeps out the dirt and deluges the 
brick floor with hot water, sometimes to find, a morning 
or so later, that the ants are again besieging her dwelling. 

We pass many trees on our way through the country. 
Even on the plains there are woods always in sight. 
Paraguay has large forests containing excellent lumber. 
Some of its trees could be used for shipbuilding, for the 
wood can remain under the water for years and still not 
decay. Other trees have a fine grain, so that they 
would make beautiful furniture, and others are good for 
tan bark, dyewoods, and many sorts of things. 

As we think of this, it seems strange that these great 
forests do not supply all South America with lumber. It 
would surely be cheaper to get wood for Argentina, Chile, 
and Peru from here than from our forests in Oregon and 
New England. Yes, it seems so at first, but not after you 
have studied the matter. 

The Paraguay woods are so heavy that they will not 
float. The trees must be loaded upon carts and dragged 
through the forests, or they must be put upon railroad 
cars and brought to Asuncion before they can be shipped 
down the Paraguay to Buenos Aires. In our country 
we have the snow to help us get the trees to the rivers, 



230 



PARAGUAY. 



and our lumber floats. Here it costs a great deal to 
get the logs out of the forests, and the freight rates on 
the river steamers are so high that it is much cheaper for 
the people along the coasts of South America to bring 
their lumber from North America, more than five thou- 
sand miles away, than to buy it here, nearer home. 

But we are nearing a 
station. Get out your 
money for that crowd 
of women peddlers who 
are coming to canvass 
the cars. Here they 
are now. One has a 
pile of straw hats fitted 
one into the other on 
the top of her head. She 
will sell one for fifteen 
cents of our money. 
There is a bareheaded 
girl with a platter of 
cakes each as large around as a one-gallon crock, and there 
are others with fruits and baby clothes and fine laces. 
Notice the lace handkerchiefs which that dark-faced little 
girl spreads out before you. They are as delicate as cob- 
webs, and are made of fibers grown in the country. Lace- 
making is one of the great industries of Paraguayan 
women, and you can buy beautiful things very cheap. 

Let us get out on the platform and follow the crowd 
rushing toward the women squatted down on the bricks. 
They are peddlers, but their wares are too heavy to be 
brought into the train. Some are seUing meat. Yes, 
selHng beefsteaks at a station ! They have baskets of raw 
beef before them, and are peddling it out to the passengers. 




As delicate as cobwebs.' 



TRIP INTO THE INTERIOR. 



231 



What a lot of the women are smoking ! Nearly every 
one has a cigar in her mouth. If it were not for this we 
might think some of the girls very pretty. They have 
cream-colored faces, dark eyes, soft black hair, and fairly 
good teeth. Nearly all are in their bare feet, and as we 
walk we have to be careful not to step on their toes 
with our heavy shoes. 

But here is a maiden with a lot of oranges piled up be- 
fore her. Let us see how many we can get for a medio, 




You often see a hundred women trotting along thus in single file." 



which is about three quarters of a cent of our money. 
I point to the oranges and say in my poor Spanish : 
** Quantos por un medio, senorita? " 

'' Ocho," replies the girl, as she puffs a volume of smoke 
out of her nostrils and hands me eight golden balls. 

We find the oranges as sweet as the best of our Florida 
fruit. They have a fine flavor, and are so cheap that we 
buy more and more as we go from station to station. 



232 



PARAGUAY. 



Paraguay is beyond all others the country of oranges. 
You see orange trees in every thicket, and out of every 
forest they peep at you with their thousand golden eyes. 
The mud huts of the farmers stand amid orange groves, 
and in some places there are so many oranges that they 
rot on the ground. 

Oranges are exported by millions down the Paraguay 
river to Uruguay and Argentina. They are brought to 
the banks of the river from the orchards in ox carts so 
large that each will hold about five thousand oranges. 
The fruit is dumped out like so many potatoes, the drivers 
taking no more care in emptying their carts than our 
drivers do when they dump dirt in repairing the roads. 




Loading a Steamer. 

At the towns along the Paraguay river during the season 
there are great piles of oranges, with scores of women 
kneeling before them, picking up the fruit and putting it 



THE CHACO. 233 

into baskets. As soon as a basket is full it is handed to a 
woman carrier, who raises it to her head, and thus balan- 
cing it trots along with it over a broad walk above the water 
to the steamer. You often see a hundred women trotting 
along thus in single file. Each has on the top of her head 
a round basket filled with oranges. She does not touch 
her hand to the basket, and walks rapidly over the spring- 
ing boards. 

At the steamer the hold is first filled with oranges. 
Then a wire netting is stretched about the deck, making 
a fence as high as a man's head, within which the golden 
fruit is piled. 



XXX. PARAGUAY— A CURIOUS TEA— 
THE CHACO AND ITS INDIANS. 

WE have returned from our trip in the interior and are 
again on our way to the north. There are boats 
twice a week from Asuncion to Villa Concepcion, and once 
a fortnight a BraziHan steamer calls at the Paraguay ports 
on its way into the wilds of southern Brazil. We resolve 
to go first to Villa Concepcion, and from there to make 
some tours through the forests on both sides of the river. 
Shortly after leaving Asuncion the Paraguay narrows. 
The scenes along it are of great beauty. The banks are 
well wooded. We now and then see a clearing in which 
there is a village with orange trees hanging above the 
thatched huts. There are more wild birds than there were 
farther south. Alligators are numerous, and when we 
rise before day we now and then catch a glimpse of a 
panther swimming across the river, as they sometimes do 
CARP. s. AM. — 15 



234 PARAGUAY. 

about dawn. We pass the mouth of the river Confuso, 
and come to land again at Villa Concepcion. 

Here we see scores of men bringing bales of mate, or 
Paraguay tea, down to the wharves and putting them on 
the steamer. Mate is one of the chief exports of Para- 
guay. It commands a high price in all South American 
countries below the equator, and, indeed, Paraguay pro- 
duces so much of it every year that if the product were all 
cooked up at once it would make a cup of tea for every 
man, woman, and child in the world. 

Mate was used as tea before Columbus discovered 
America. The Indians induced the Spaniards to try it, 
and it has now become the favorite beverage of many 
South American nations. Argentina uses seven times as 
much mate as coffee, and twenty-six times as much mate as 
Chinese or Japanese tea. Brazil, which raises more coffee 
than any other country in the world, uses a great deal of 
mate, and the people of Uruguay and Chile prefer it to all 
other drinks. 

But what is this tea that so tickles the South American 
palate? It is easy to learn. There is a woman on the 
steamer who is drinking some now. Our cabin boy will 
bring us a bowl if we ask him. It is served in a round 
gourd as big as a baseball. The gourd has a handle 
fitted into the side, and you drink your tea boiling hot. 
A spoonful of the powdered leaves is put into the bowl, 
the hot water is poured in, and the tea is ready for use. 
You do not put the bowl to your mouth, but suck the mate 
up through a tube. The tube is called a bombilla (bom- 
belVa). Sometimes it is of silver, sometimes of brass, and 
among the poorer people often a hollow reed. The metal 
tube ends in a bulb. This bulb is pierced with holes, so 
that the tea is strained as you suck it into your mouth. 



^HE C^ACO. 



235 



Here comes the boy with our mate. Be careful how 
you put the bombilla, between your lips. The boiling tea 
has made it so hot that it may take off the skin. Wet 
your lips first and then try it. How bitter the tea is! It 
does not taste at all good at first drinking, but you will 
come to like it, and will probably want it again and again 
during our tour. 

The tea is quite stimulating. It is said to be good for 
the brain, and it will refresh you when you are tired. 
Many South Americans take nothing else for their early 
breakfast. If the gauchos of the Argentina pampas can 
have their mate in the morning the)/ will gallop on horse- 
back all day, and be satisfied if they get their first meal 
when we are eating our suppers. 



^;;^ 




Gathering Mate. 

We leave the ship at Villa Concepcion and go many 
miles inland to see the tea forests. They are called yer- 
bales. The plants which furnish the mate are low bushes 



236 PAR^UAY*V ** 

which grow among the other trees. They are much like 
the holly bush, and sometimes' "grow as high as a small 
orange tree. The leaves are green all the year round, and 
it is the younger leaves which make the best tea. 

The people who gather the mate leaves are called 
yerbateros (yer-ba-ta'r»s). They chop off the small 
branches and bring them in bundles to the camps which 
have been put up in the forest. Here there are drying 
houses, each consisting of a framework with an arched roof 
of poles woven together and upheld by posts. Under the 
roof there is a floor of clay, so well hammered down that 
it is as hard as stone. 

The branches are taken from the men as soon as they 
are brought in by other laborers, who weave them in and 
out among the poles of the roof, so that the framework is 
thatched with the leaves. Then a slow fire is built on the 
clay floor, and the leaves are thus roasted until they are 
perfectly dry. Sweet-smelling woods are used for fuel, 
and the fires are kept up from daylight until dark, great 
care being taken that there be but little smoke. 

When the leaves have become perfectly dry the fire is 
removed and the leaves are pushed through the frame- 
work, crumbling up as they fall to the floor. They are 
now pounded with flat wooden clubs until they become a 
coarse powder. This forms the mate of commerce. 

The mate powder is now ready for packing. This is 
done in bags of rawhide. The skin of a large ox is taken 
just as it comes fresh from the animal, and sewed up, 
forming a bag like a square pillowcase about three feet in 
length. Into this the mate is put, being so pounded down 
that when the bag is full it forms a solid bale. Now the 
top is sewed up with thongs of green hide, and the bale is 
placed in the sun. The 3kin dries as the sun's rays strike 



THE CHACO. 



237 



it, shrinking in and pressing the mate tighter and tighter, 
until the whole seems one solid rock. 

About a million dollars' worth of such bales of tea are 
made in Paraguay each year, and we shall see mule trains 
loaded with them making their way 
toward Villa Concepcion and the other 
ports of the country. 

We meet many Indians as we go 
through the forests. Some of the 
more civihzed are employed gathering 
mate ; others are savage, and we must 
be careful how we go about by our- 
selves. We find this especially so 
in the Chaco, in which we make 
some journeys after coming back to 
Villa Concepcion. The Paraguayan 
Chaco is inhabited almost entirely 
by Indians, some of whom are of the 
strangest tribes of our hemisphere. 

There are some Indians who go 
naked all the year round. The Tobas, for instance, wear 
but Httle clothes, except when they come into the pres- 
ence of white people or cross the Paraguay river to trade. 
These Indians are very tall, some being six feet in height. 
Their skin is so thick that it is said they can walk on 
thorny ground without sandals. The men are good hunt- 
ers and fishers, but the women do most of the work, 
planting the crops, cooking the meals, and weaving the 
blankets. The Toba women tatoo themselves in blue 
and red lines, and dye their hair yellow. 

Another tribe is the Lenguas. They are experts in 
taming wild animals and birds. Farther north there are 
Indians who were noted as oarsmen when the Spanish 




Toba Indian, 



238 



PARAGUAY. 



first came. They were terrible warriors, and when on 
the rivers they had oars tipped with spearheads, so that 
in close combats they could use them as weapons. 

Many of the South American Indians do not live in 
wigwams. Some wander from place to place, having no 
houses whatever. Others have villages with huts so built 
together that one roof of straw thatch covers several 




Indian Family. 



houses. One part of the hut- is used for cooking and 
another for sleeping. The people sleep upon skins when 
they have them, otherwise on the bare ground. The 
women are good cooks, and some are quite cleanly, wash- 
ing their pots and pans at the close of each meal. They 
have but few cooking utensils. They use shells for spoons. 
Every one carries his own knife, but forks are unknown. 



THE CHACO. 



239 



Their chief weapons are bows and arrows, some of the 
Indians being so skillful that they can bring down the 
most savage beasts of the forest. 

The Chaco is a great hunting country. We can shoot 
alligators along any of the small streams, and in traveling 




"There are jaguars in the Chaco." 



near the water at night we have to step carefully, lest we 
get our feet into their mouths. There are jaguars in the 
Chaco so strong that one of them can easily carry off an 
ox or a horse. They do not attack men unless they are 
very hungry, and if we meet them in the underbrush a 
yell will usually drive them away. 

As we camp overnight in the forest, however, we are 
now and then aroused by the crack of a branch, and, look- 
ing up, see the fierce eyes of a brute flashing out of the 



240 



PARAGUAY. 



darkness. We find we have to send away our dogs. The 
jaguars hate dogs, and we are told that for this reason it 
is dangerous to travel with them through the forest. 

Among the most dangerous animals of the Chaco are 
the wild dogs. There is one called the aguara guazu, 
which is a beast of prey. It is not quite three feet long, 
and is for all the world like a sharp-eared yellow dog with 
black legs. It has a sharp muzzle, and its ears are always 
erect. It has a bushy tail like that of a fox. It has a 
hoarse bark, which can be heard a long way off. This dog 

lives in the 
. \ swamps and 

goes hunting 
' at night. It 
attacks sheep 
and cattle, and 
will fight for 
its life with a 
jaguar. 

But what is 
that shrill, 

whistling cry 
which we hear 
night after night as we go through the forests? That is a 
tapir, an animal with a head much like a pig, although it is 
as big as a pony. It is very dangerous if interfered with, 
and its skin is so thick that it is almost impossible to kill 
it unless you hit it just in the forehead or behind the 
shoulder. 

Even more dangerous, however, are the peccaries, which 
are found in great numbers in parts of the Chaco. They 
are little wild pigs with sharp teeth, which go in herds of 
eight or ten, and sometimes in droves of fifty or more. 




Peccary. 



THE CHACO. 



241 



They are very ferocious, and often attack travelers who 
come near them on foot. If we should meet them our 
best way would be to climb a tree and shoot at them from 




Tapir. 

there. Peccaries live on roots and fallen fruits. They eat 
the wild oranges and the nuts of the woods, and often 
come at night close to the Paraguayan villages to get the 
oranges which grow in the gardens. 

There are many other curious beasts which live in these 
forests. We might stay for weeks and have excellent 
hunting, for in addition to the dangerous animals there 
are many species of deer, antelope, and different kinds of 
Diras. Ihe mail steamer, however, is almost due at Villa 
Concepcion, and we must hurry back if we would go in it 
to Brazil. ^ 




(242) 



Brazil. 



MATTO GROSSO. 243 



XXXI. IN BRAZIL— THE WILDS OF MATTO 
GROSSO. 

TO-DAY we are again on the Paraguay river. We 
have been travehng for some time upon it, and are 
now in the wilds of southern Brazil. Our ship is winding 
in and out among mountains, at the bases of which are fern 
trees and tall palms. Now we go by forests which are so 
filled with vines and creepers that we can see only a few 
feet back from the banks, and we could not possibly make 
our way into the interior without an ax or a knife. 

What is that furry face with the twinkling black eyes 
which grins at us out of the branches, chattering now and 
then, and gnashing its teeth ? That is a monkey. There 
are thousands of them in these forests. That great red- 
and-blue bird with a hooked bill as long as your finger, 
which you see farther on, is a toucan. There are all sorts of 
strange birds in the trees. 

There are many wild animals. See that white deer 
there in the bushes. Those black things near the shore, 
which look like small logs, are alligators. They have been 
disturbed by the waves of the steamer and are scrambling 
upon the banks. Some are diving down into the water, 
and others are swimming to get out of the way of our boat. 

Look at the Indians on the other side of the river. They 
are half naked, and they shake their spears at us as we steam 
on our way. This part of Brazil is full of wild Indians ; 
there are more Indians than whites. There are vast regions 
farther on to the west which have no people but savages. 

As we proceed, the wildness increases, save here and 
there where we pass farmhouses cut out of the woods. 



!44 



BRAZIL. 



from the river and the small streams flowing into it 



Now our boat stops at one for fresh meat. The cattle are 
lifted on board by their horns. We are supplied with fish 

There 
are so many fish 
here that you Jiave 
only to explode a 
dynamite cartridge 
under the water, 
and dozens of fish, 
killed by the shock, 
will float on their 
backs on all sides 
of your boat. 

Atthebound- 
ary of Brazil we 
pass a fortifi- 
cation with sol- 
diers about it. 
This is Fort Co- 
imbra ; a little 
farther on we 
pass the Brazil- 
ian arsenal of 
. Godario, and 
soon after this 
reach the little city 
of Corumba'. This 
port has the only 
customs house of 
this part of Brazil. Inspectors in blue uniforms board 
our steamer as it stops at the wharves, and our baggage 
must be spread out before them. 

While the steamer waits, we visit the city, which is on 




There are thousands of them in these forests. 



MATTO GROSSO. 



245 



a high bluff overlooking the river. It has about ten 
thousand people, and it looks so much Hke Asuncion that 
we might think we were back among the Paraguayans, 
were it not that the language is strange. The people of 




A Farmhouse. 

Corumba all speak Portuguese. This is the language of 
Brazil, and from now on for weeks we shall hear little else. 
It sounds much like Spanish, but is a little harsher and not 
so melodious. 

We are now traveling in the state of Matto Grosso. The 
words mean '* Great Forest," and the state of Matto Grosso 
is one of the wildest parts of Brazil. It has vast territories 
covered with woods which have never been trodden by 
white men, and there are plains in it upon which thou- 
sands of wild cattle are feeding. It is a large state, being 
twice as large as Texas and more than ten times as large 
as New York. The part through which we are traveling 



246 



BRAZIL. 



contains the only white settlements, and Cuyaba (coo- 
ya-ba'), the city where we next stop, is its capital, the 
metropoHs of interior Brazil. 

The way we came up the Paraguay river is the only 
easy route to Matto Grosso. There are no railroads in 
this part of Brazil, and although Cuyaba is not more than 




' t\i iiie boundary of Brazil we pass a fortification with soldiers about it." 

nine hundred miles from Rio de Janeiro, its officials and 
mails have to go more than thirty-eight hundred miles to 
reach it. They come on steamers down the Atlantic to 
Montevideo, and then steam on through the Rio de la 
Plata, Parana, and Paraguay to Corumba. Here smaller 
ships are taken, and they travel up other rivers until they 
land at last at this point, which is farther by this way from 
the ocean than Salt Lake City is distant from Washington. 
It takes more than a month for a letter now to come from 



MATTO GROSSO. 



247 




Cuyaba. 

Rio de Janeiro to Cuyaba, but at some time a railroad will 
be built overland, upon which the trip can be made in less 
than two days. 

At present almost all traveling is done upon the water. 
We do not find horses and mules common here, and away 
from the river we are offered bullocks for riding animals. 
We see women and men riding bullocks, the women sitting 
astride like the men. Bullocks are used for plowing. 
They drag huge carts over the road, and they serve as 
pack animals. It seems very funny when we first climb 
on their backs, but we find some of them good saddle 
beasts, their gait being a sort of pace. 

We are surprised at the size of Cuyaba. It has about 
twenty thousand people, and, for such an out-of-the- 
way place, many modern improvements. It has street 



248 



BRAZIL. 



cars, waterworks, and a cathedral. It has colleges and 
schools. There is music on Sunday afternoon in the 
plaza, and we go there often at eventide to enjoy ourselves 

under the great palm trees, 
whose fanlike leaves move to 
and fro in the breeze. 

The region about Cuyaba 
is a rich farming country, and 
we are told that there is gold 
in the hills near the city. 
There are mines close to the 
town, which are still being 
worked, and after a big rain 
the Cuyaba boys go out and 
search for grains of gold in 
the streets which have been 
flooded by the streams from 
the hills. We are told that 
the boys are often well paid 
for their trouble, and we get down on our knees to see if 
perhaps we can find a stray golden nugget, but, alas ! there 
is nothing but sand. 

We spend some time in the woods near Cuyaba. They 
are full of strange plants, one of which is exported to all 
parts of the world. This is ipecac, a small shrub which 
grows in clumps or patches in the moist parts of the for- 
ests. It is often used to make children vomit when they 
have swallowed a penny or eaten some indigestible or 
poisonous thing. 

We see Indians hunting for it as we go through the 
forest. When they find one of the plants they pry it out 
of the ground with a stick, raising it very carefully to save 
all the roots, for the roots form the article of commerce. 




An Indian of Matto Grosso. 



SOUTHERN BRAZIL. 



249 




"We are offered bullocks for riding animals. "% 

After they are taken out they are dried for three days in 
the sun. They are then broken up, cleaned, and packed 
in bags of cow's skin, and thus shipped to the factories of 
Europe. 

XXXII. SOUTHERN .BRAZIL. 



WE have been travehng more than a month since we 
left Matto Grosso. From Cuyaba we sailed back 
into the Paraguay river, and on down through the Parana 
to Montevideo. There we took a coasting steamer, and 
we are now making our way from port to port along the 
shores of southern Brazil. 

What an immense country Brazil is ! It is hard for us 
to realize its extent. The states which look so small on the 



250 BRAZIL. 

map widen out as we travel over them, and we are struck 
with the fact that we are in one of the large countries 
of the world. There are only four other nations which 
own so much land as the Brazilians. Their republic is 
larger than the whole United States, without Alaska and 
our outlying islands. It is longer from north to south 
than the distance from Pittsburg to San Francisco, and its 
width from east to west is greater than the distance from 
New York to Salt Lake City. It contains more than 
3,228,000 square miles, almost half of all the land of 
South America. 

Brazil has more than half the people of South America. 
Its population is estimated at eighteen millions. Its peo- 
ple are different in their origin as well as in their customs 
from the other South Americans. Brazil was discovered 
and settled by the Portuguese, and its people speak the 
Portuguese tongue. We often hear South America called 
the Spanish-American continent. It would be quite as 
proper to call it the Portuguese-American continent, on 
account of the size and population of Brazil. 

Such a vast territory must have many kinds of soil 
and many climates. Brazil extends from north of the 
equator far to the southward, and the weather of the 
different regions changes also according to their different 
elevations above the sea. In the low Amazon valley it is 
almost always hot, but the winds from the ocean sweep 
up the wide river and make some parts of it healthful. 
South of the Amazon valley, a little back from the coast, 
the land is high, so that it has quite as salubrious a climate 
as many parts of our country. Some of the plateaus, from 
lack of rain, are deserts, others upon which heavy rains 
fall are covered with woods, and upon others much farther 
south can be grown all the crops of our Southern States. 



SOUTHERN BRAZIL. 



251 



Near the borders of Uruguay there are pastures as good 
as those of Argentina. There the thermometer never rises 
above 100° in the summer month of January, and there 
in midwinter (July) there is often snow on the ground. 




"There are vast pastures." 

We reach this region first as we sail along the coast. 
We stop at Porto Alegre (por'to a-la'gra), the capital of 
the state of Rio Grande do Sul. This state is devoted to 
raising wheat and meat. Its pastures are much Hke those 
of Argentina; it has beef factories such as we saw on the 
Uruguay river, in which hundreds of oxen are killed every 
day for jerked or dried beef. 

Porto Alegre has thirty-five thousand people. It has 
daily newspapers, colleges, public schools, and fine stores. 
We are surprised to see that the faces of more than half of 

CARP. S, AM. — 16 



252 



BRAZIL. 



the people are German. We speak German to the clerks 
in the stores, and meet many little German children on the 
streets. Rio Grande do Sul is largely settled by Germans. 
They have come here from Europe, and find the climate 
quite as good as that of their fatherland on the other side 
of the Atlantic. Many of them own large farms, stores, 
and factories. 

Leaving Porto Alegre, we go north to Santos (san'tos), 
sail up a wide bay, and come into a harbor which is filled 
with ships from Europe and the United States, loading 
and unloading freight. Santos is the chief port for a large 
part of southern Brazil. It is where the most of the coffee 
is shipped, and it is visited regularly by twenty lines of 
ocean steamers, which come here to bring goods and to 
carry away coffee to other parts of the world. We see 
some ships loading coffee ; others are taking off bags of 
rice from India, boxes of codfish from Massachusetts and 
Newfoundland, coal and cottons from England, and lum- 
ber from the pine lands of Maine. 

It is a busy scene, and we are anxious to get to the 
shore. Now we have hired a dark-faced Portuguese boat- 
man, and have made our way among the ships to the 
wharves. What a strong smell of coffee surrounds us! 
The air is full of it. It comes from the warehouses back of 
the wharves, in which we see half-naked negroes shoveling 
coffee from piles into bags. It comes from the bags which 
other negroes are carrying on to the steamers, and also 
from those big wagons loaded with coffee on their way 
through the city. Here the coffee bags are being lifted 
by steam cranes from the wharves to the steamers ; there 
men are trotting along with bags on their backs, and over 
there they are carrying the bags on their heads and empty- 
ing them out on the floors of the factories, where the 



SOUTHERN BRAZIL. 



253 



coffee is to be cleaned and rebagged before it is ready for 
shipment. We shall see more of this in Rio de Janeiro 
later on. 

Santos has about twenty-five thousand people. It is a 
town of tw^o- and three-story houses built along narrow 
streets on the edge of the harbor. It is very unhealthful. 




Loading Coffee. 

It frequently has yellow fever, and strangers are liable to 
get the disease. We are warned not to stay long, and 
hurry on to the station and take tickets for the more salu- 
brious city of Sao Paulo (souN pou'lo), which lies on the 
plateau over the mountains, about forty-seven miles back 
from the sea. 

The ride is delightful. Leaving the city, we are carried 
through fields of bananas, the tall plants bending down 
with great bunches of yellow fruit. We go through a 
jungle of tropical vegetation, and then ascend the moun- 



254 



BRAZIL. 



tains, winding this way and that through a dense forest in 
which there are milHons of orchids. The trees are loaded 
with these beautiful air plants. They are bound to- 
gether with creepers and vines, and the whole forms a for- 
est wall on each side of the track, so dense that we can see 
only a few feet through the trees. 




"A great feat of civil engineering." 

The railroad which takes us up the coast range is a 
great feat of civil engineering. The ordinary locomo- 
tives are uncoupled from the cars at the foot of the 
mountains, and our train is divided into sections of two 
cars each. Around each two cars a steel rope, or cable, is 
wrapped, and this cable is fastened to a third car which 
has a brake, so that the engineers can keep it from sHding 
back if an accident should happen on the way up. An- 



SOUTHERN BRAZIL. 255 

Other cable is joined to the grip car. This cable extends 
several miles up the mountains to a stationary steam 
engine. When the men on the car give a signal, the en- 
gineer above moves a lever, and a great wheel begins to 
revolve, rolling up the cable, and so pulling our cars on 
their way to the station. When we reach the first engine 
house, another cable is attached, connecting us with an 
engine house still higher up, and so the cars are dragged 
on until at the third station they have been taken about 
a half-mile higher up in the air than they were when they 
started. At this point the cars are again fastened together, 
and a railroad locomotive rapidly carries our train over 
a gently sloping plateau, and lands us in Sao Paulo. 

Here we remain several days. Sao Paulo is the largest 
city of southern Brazil. It has about two hundred thou- 
sand people, and it is one of the most enterprising cities of 
the republic. 

It is more like one of our own towns than any South 
American place we have yet seen. It is the capital of the 
state of Sao Paulo, which has some of the best of the 
coffee lands. The city has government buildings as good 
as those of the State capitals of our country, and some of 
its schoolhouses are as fine as any schoolhouse in the 
United States. 

We stay overnight at the hotel, and upon rising take a 
walk through the town. It is early morning, and the 
children are going to school. There are scores of bright- 
faced little girls without hats, in black dresses. There are 
httle boys wearing caps, coats, and knee breeches, but 
with their legs bare almost to their shoes, where their 
short stockings end. Each child has a bag of books in 
his hand; they are trudging along over the cobblestone 
streets. 



256 



BRAZIL. 




In Sao Paulo. 



Get out of the way of the street cars ! They come in 
a train, one car following another until a dozen have 
passed. When they are beyond the business part of the 
city they will branch out in various directions. 

What odd cars they are ! Some of them are loaded 
with freight. These are second-class cars, intended for 
people going to and from market. They are used chiefly 
by the servants, for a man with a basket or bundle is not 
allowed to ride in a regular passenger car. 

What is that queer vehicle coming this way? I mean 
that two-wheeled carriage drawn by the pony, with the 
seat high up off the ground. That is a tilbury, a favorite 
vehicle in all Brazilian cities, and well fitted for a hilly 
town like Sao Paulo. 



THE LAND OF COFFEE. 257 

What a lot of negroes we meet ever5^where! They 
make us feel as though we were at home in our southern 
States. Brazil has more negroes in proportion to the 
whites than any part of our country. It had slaves much 
longer than we had, but now all have been freed, and peo- 
ple of African blood have equal rights with all others. 

Here come three Africans now. Listen to that laugh. 
It sounds Hke the jolly yah! yah! yah! of our dark- 
skinned Americans. Let us wait here on the corner and 
hear some of their jokes as they pass. 

Why don't we laugh? That man on the left said some- 
thing funny, and his fellows and himself are convulsed. 
They are speaking quite loud, and though v/e hear what 
they say we cannot see the joke. They are speaking in 
Portuguese, the language used by both colored and whites 
in Brazil. 

XXXIII. IN THE LAND OF COFFEE. 

BRAZIL is the chief coffee country in the world. It 
produces more than two thirds of all the coffee used 
by man. This very morning there are millions of people 
in the United States who have had a cup of Brazihan 
coffee with their breakfasts. Most of the coffee we drink 
comes from Brazil. 

Coffee grows best in a semitropical climate. The 
plants must not have frost, but at the same time they must 
not be spoiled by the heat. The climate of many parts 
of Brazil is just right for them. Indeed, it is said that 
coffee can be grown in every one of the Brazilian states. 
The best coffee regions, however, are to be found on the 



258 



BRAZIL. 



highlands west and south of Rio de Janeiro. Here the 
land is from one thousand to three thousand feet above 
the sea. It is gently rolling, and it has thousands of hill- 
sides which are covered with coffee plantations. 

The best of all coffee lands, indeed, lie in the state of 
Sao Paulo, where we now are. They are several hundred 
miles back from the coast, and by taking the train we can 
visit some of the richest coffee estates of the world. 

The largest plantations are so far from the city of Sao 
Paulo that it would take us almost a day to reach them by 
railroad. We ride through roUing plains covered with 
grass ; now we pass clumps of palms whose tops extend 
out like great fans, and then go on through forests of hard- 
wood trees, the trunks of which are twisted about like 





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Banana Plantation. 



THE LAND OF COFFEE. 



259 



corkscrews. The trees are bound together in a mat made 
b)^ the long vines and creepers which hang down from 
their branches. Now we pass a banana plantation, and 
now we see lemon and orange trees in the gardens by the 
side of the road. 

It is dry, for this part of Brazil has not had rain for 
some weeks. There is a cool wind blowing, but the air 
which comes over the plowed fields is loaded with dust. 




Coffee Plantation. 



The boys who peddle fruit at the stations are covered with 
dust, and we find ourselves sneezing as the stuff gets into 
our noses. 

What queer dust it is! It is as red as brick dust, and 
everything it touches turns red. We are soon as red as 



26o BRAZIL. 

Sioux Indians; our collars have red streaks at the neck, 
and our coats look as though they were dusted with Cay- 
enne pepper. There is red on the fences and trees and on 
the green bushes. We see wide streaks of red cutting 
their way through the reddish-green grass. Those streaks 
are the roads, for the very ground itself under the sod is 
the color of pounded-up brick. 

This red land is the famous coffee soil of Brazil. Its 
color comes from the large amount of iron mixed with the 
other matter composing it, and the redder the soil the bet- 
ter it is thought to be for the raising of coffee. 

About fifty miles from Sao Paulo the plantations begin, 
and from there on we ride all day long among hills cov- 
ered with coffee bushes. 

Most of the coffee is grown upon large plantations. 
The estate we visit has about five million trees. It is in- 
deed the largest coffee plantation of the world. It is so 
large that we could not walk around the outside of it in 
one day, if we began when the sun rose and kept walking 
steadily until dark. It is so large that its managers have 
railroad tracks extending from the factories to all parts^of 
it, and we are carried from one coffee field to another on 
a little steam engine which is kept for hauling the crops. 

The ride is a beautiful one. We spend hours going 
through one coffee field after another. There is nothing 
but coffee bushes about us as far as our eyes can reach. 
The whole land is covered with a mantle of green, striped 
here and there with bands of bright red. The green 
mantle is the coffee bushes, and the red stripes the 
roads. The bushes are laid out in regular lines, and they 
extend on and on until they lose themselves in the sky at 
the tops of the hills in the distance. 

As we proceed we can see the coffee plants in their 



THE LAND OF COFFEE. 



261 



different stages of growth. In some fields they are not so 
high as our knees, and in others they are three times as high 
as our heads. Here men are plowing the fields, driving 
carefully through the green trees, turning up the red soil. 
There boys are down on their knees pulling out the weeds, 
and farther on a 
■gang of laborers is 
laying out new rows 
among the stumps of 
the freshly cleared 
land, and putting in 
coffee plants from 
the nurseries. 

We shall learn, as 
we go, what a great 
deal of work is re- 
quired to produce 
even one cup of cof- 
fee. Upon this plan- 
tation five thousand 
people are busy rais- 
ing the crop and pre- 
paring it for the 
market. In the first 
place, let me tell you just what the coffee beans are. As 
you see them in the stores they are far different from the 
coffee berries which are picked from the trees. The beans 
are the seeds of the berries. You can see some of the 
berries on that bush over there. They are just like dark- 
red cherries. They hang in clusters close to the limbs, 
among the green leaves. In each berry are one or two 
seeds, which form the coffee of commerce. How they are 
got out we shall see at the factory later on. 




Coffee Ti( 



262 



BRAZIL. 



Here in the fields we must learn how the bushes are 
grown. 

The beans must first be sown in seed beds. They 
soon sprout, and Httle green plants shoot up through 
the soil. After a few months they have grown a foot 
high. They are now ready for transplanting to the fields, 
where they are to become big coffee bushes, or, as they 
are sometimes called, cofTee trees. 




Picking Coffee Berries. 

The plants are set quite deep in the ground. A little 
basin is dug out for each one, and at first sticks or leaves 
are spread over it to protect it from the hot rays of the 
sun. It is carefully hoed to keep down the weeds, and 
when it is four years old it begins to bear fruit. 

A good tree should produce three or four pounds 
of coffee beans a year, and in the rich coffee lands of 
South Brazil a tree often bears crops for thirty years, and 
sometimes more. 



THE LAND OF COFFEE. 



263 



The coffee bushes begin to blossom in December, and 
in April or May the berries are ripe and the picking 
begins. There are then hundreds of men, women, and 
children moving among the bushes. They are picking the 
ripe red berries into baskets and carrying them to the cars 
which are to take them to the factories on the plantation. 




Carting Coffee. 

During our journey we see here and there long rows of 
one-story houses, and near them large buildings which look 
like machine shops. The small houses are the homes of 
the laborers on the estate. The big ones are the places in 
which the coffee seeds are taken out of the berries and 
prepared for the markets. They contain machinery of 
different kinds for extracting the seeds, and near them are 
the drying floors, great fields paved with cement, upon 
which the coffee beans are dried in the sun after they are 
taken out of the berries. 



264 



BRAZIL. 



But first let us see how the seeds are extracted. There 
are some berries which have just come in from the fields. 
Take one up and look at it. It is just like a cherry, and 
almost as soft. Bite into it if you will. It is not bad to 
taste, though it is not much Hke coffee. Just inside the 
skin is a pulp, and within this are two half-round coffee 
beans with their flat sides touching each other. Take out 
the seeds. They do not look green like the coffee of 
commerce. Thev are white. Bite one of them again and 




Drying Coffee. 

you find that it has two skins. The outer skin is white. 
It is like parchment. The inner skin is as thin as the 
finest tissue paper you can imagine. The outside skin is 
called the parchment skin, and that within the silver skin, 
for it is much like silver spun out as fine as a cobweb. 
Both of these must be taken off before the coffee can be 
sent to our markets. 

The first thing to be done is to get off the pulp. For 
this purpose the berries are thrown into a hopper and run 



THE LAND OF COFFEE. 



265 



through machines which squash the pulp without hurting 
the seeds. By these machines the berries are reduced to 
a mush of pulp and seeds. The mush is now carried over 
a long copper cylinder about two feet in diameter. In the 
cylinder there are hundreds of holes, each big enough for 
a coffee bean to pass through it. As the mush falls upon 




Most of them are Italians. 



the cylinder, the beans go through the holes and are car- 
ried into a little canal, from which they float off into 
great vats. 

They are next scoured clean in a tank in which a great 
screw moves round and round among the beans, leaving 
them at the end as white as snow. 

The next process is drying. The white beans are 
spread out upon the drying platforms, and are left in the 
sun for several weeks until every one of them has become 
as dry as a bone. They are carefully watched at this 



266 BRAZIL. 

time. Men stir them about with wooden rakes, so that 
they may be evenly dried, and cover them up at night and 
when it rains, so that they may not get wet. 

This requires great care and much work, but when the 
beans are thoroughly dried they are by no means ready 
for sale. Each little bean has to be skinned. It has to be 
undressed, as it were. Its parchment coat must be taken 
off, and its silver-skin underclothes removed, so that it 
may be sent out in its olive-green nakedness to our mar- 
kets. 

To do this it is thrown into machines which break the 
skins. It is next carried into fanning mills, in which the 
skins are blown out in one place in the shape of chaff, like 
the chaff of a thrashing machine, and the coffee seeds, now 
olive green, flow out by themselves. 

The seeds are of different sizes, some large and some 
small, some round and some almost flat. They must be 
separated and graded before they are ready for shipment. 
This is done by passing them over a series of sieves in 
which there are holes of different sizes, so that the grains 
of each kind are gathered together, and they flow out 
through different pipes into bags, ready to be shipped to 
the markets of the world. 

The coffee bags are of one size. Each will hold one 
hundred and thirty-two pounds. As soon as a bag is 
full it is sewed up at the top and dragged off to the side. 
Later on it is taken on the cars to Rio de Janeiro or San- 
tos, and there loaded upon ships which carry it to the 
United States or to Europe. 

We spend some time in going about among the labor- 
ers on the estate. Most of them are Italians, who have 
taken the place of the negro slaves who were the coffee 
workers of Brazil a few years ago. 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 267 

We see that the plantation is carefully managed. It 
has its overseers, its bookkeepers and accountants, who try 
to see that not a cent goes to waste. There is a large 
store upon it, at which the laborers can buy food, and it 
has its own bakery, foundry, and sawmills. It is indeed 
a little world of its own, which has grown up here in the 
heart of South America to produce the coffee which we 
drink at our meals. 



3j@4< 



XXXIV. RIO DE JANEIRO. 

WE are again on shipboard this morning. We have 
gone back to Santos and taken the steamer for Rio, 
and are now saiHng into its wonderful harbor. We might 
have traveled from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro by rail, 
but we wish to pass through the harbor of Rio, for it is the 
most beautiful harbor of the whole world. It has been 
compared with the harbor of the Golden Horn of Con- 
stantinople ; but the author has seen both places, and he 
thinks the Bay of Rio de Janeiro far finer. This bay is 
much the shape of a great pear, and is so large that all the 
ships of the world could be anchored in it at one time. 

About the harbor, just a little back from its shores, rise 
the Organ Mountains, covered with the rich green of the 
tropics. Some of the hills are of curious shapes. One 
looks like a hunchback, and the people have called it 
the *' Corcovado," a Portuguese word which means hunch- 
back. Its top is more than a half-mile above the city, and 
there is a little railroad which goes up it. Another hill 
summit is much like the round head of a negro, the trees 
upon it at a distance looking like the wool on the head of 

CARP. S. AM. — 17 



26S 



BRAZIL. 



an African. Others remind us of battlements and forts, 
and all together they form a great wall of green about the 
harbor. 

We enter the bay at the smaller end, or the stem of the 
pear. We go in between two forts, passing through a 
narrow channel. On one side of us is a great mountain of 
rock formed like a sugar loaf. It rises almost straight up 




"We go in between two forts." 



from the sea to a height greater than that of two Wash- 
ington monuments one on top of the other. On the op- 
posite side are islands so close that at a distance we fear 
we may graze the shore as we steam in. 

Now we have passed through the entrance. We are in 
a landlocked sea, upon which scores of little islands are 
seemingly floating, and in front of us, under the mighty 
hills, resting apparently upon the water, is the red-and- 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 269 

white city of Rio de Janeiro, looking at us through the 
masts of the steamers anchored in front of the town. 
Closer still, we see that the houses are of all shapes, sizes, 
and colors. They are roofed with red tiles, spotted with 
moss, and many of them are dirty with the moldy damp 
of old age. 

Rio de Janeiro is one of the old cities of our hemisphere. 
It has grown up here because of its excellent harbor, and 
because it is situated at such a place that goods can be 
easily landed and carried by railroad to interior Brazil. 

Let us stop a moment before going on shore, while I 
tell you its history. It is called Rio de Janeiro. It is 
always important to know just what names mean, for from 
the name of a place we can often learn something of its 
origin. It is so with Rio de Janeiro. This harbor was 
discovered just ten years after Columbus landed in 
America. At that time navigators from the different 
parts of Europe were sailing across the Atlantic to find 
out all about the New World. 

Among them were two men named Joao Manoel and 
Amerigo Vespucci. They sailed down the coast of Brazil 
in 1 501, and when they came by the sugar loaf into the 
bay where we now are they thought it was the mouth of 
a mighty river, so they called it Rio. The day that they 
came was the ist of January, and the latter part* of the 
name was supplied by the month — '* River of January," 
Rio de Janeiro. It was afterwards discovered that it was 
not a river at all, for although about twenty small rivers flow 
down the mountains into the harbor, its waters are more 
an arm of the sea than the product of these little streams. 

It was more than fifty years after this before the first set- 
tlement was made. About sixty-five years before the 
Pilgrim fathers crossed the Atlantic to Massachusetts, in 



2 70 BRAZIL. 

order that they might establish a colony where they could 
worship God their own way, some French Huguenots emi- 
grated to South America, for the same reason, and chose 
for their settlement one of the rocky islands of this harbor. 

Here they lived for some time ; but the Portuguese, who 
claimed all Brazil by right of discovery, made war upon 
them and finally drove them away. It was shortly after 
this that Rio de Janeiro was first started, but it was not 
made the capital of all Brazil until. 1 762. 

The city at first was slow in growing. There were 
other cities, such as Bahia, farther north, which were much 
more important, and it was not until 1808 that the harbor 
was opened to the commerce of the world. When this 
was done ships from all parts of Europe began to land 
here, and the commerce which sprang up made Rio grow 
very fast. 

Rio de Janeiro was for a long time the residence of the 
rulers sent by the King of Portugal to govern Brazil, and 
when in 1822 the Brazilians broke away from Portugal and 
declared their independence, much as we declared our 
independence of England in 1776, this place was kept as 
the capital. 

Brazil did not at once become a republic. Its people 
thought they would prefer a monarchy, and they chose 
Dom Pedro I., one of the sons of the King of Portugal, as 
their ruler. He did not get along well with his subjects, 
however, and seeing that he could not reign peaceably, he 
said he would give up the throne if they would make his 
little boy their ruler in his stead. 

The Brazilians agreed to do this, although little Dom 
Pedro II. was then only six years of age. The boy was 
declared emperor, and some of the best men were chosen 
to manage the government until he grew old enough to 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 



271 



rule for himself. This time came when he reached sixteen, 
and from then on for forty-seven years he was the ruler 
of Brazil. 

He made a good ruler, too, for he was just and kind, and 
anxious to do well for his people. But he had no son to 
succeed him, so in 1888 the Brazilians concluded they 
would change their government and become a repubhc. 
Dom Pedro was forced to resign, and a government much 
like ours was established. 

It was decided at this time to keep the capital at Rio de 
Janeiro for the present, although the people are now con- 
sidering whether it would not be better to choose another 
capital farther in the interior of the country. 

During these different changes of government Rio de 
Janeiro has been steadily growing. It has increased very 
rapidly in population since 
Brazil was declared a re- 
public, and it is now next 
to Buenos Aires the larg- 
est city in South America. 
It has seven hundred thou- 
sand people, and is a great 
commercial center. 

We notice this as we 
land at the wharves among 
steamers from all parts of 
Europe. There are gangs 
of laborers, both negroes 
and whites, busy loading 
and unloading boats. 
Some of the ships taking 
on coffee are from Hamburg, Liverpool, and Lisbon, and 
others are loading for New York and Baltimore. There 




There is coffee everywhere.' 



2']2 BRAZIL. 

are also many steamers discharging all sorts of goods for 
Rio de Janeiro and the interior of Brazil. 

Over there they are taking off a cargo of jerked meat 
which has come from the beef factories of Uruguay. The 
meat is in bags, and the men carry it out on their heads. 
Near by is a sailing vessel from New York filled with pine 
lumber, and next to it a ship which has thousands of boxes 
of kerosene made from petroleum which a short time ago 
was under the ground in our Pennsylvania oil regions. 

Now we are off the ship and are pushing our way 
through the throng of workmen who are carrying the 
goods to the steamers. Most of them are negroes, and 
some are half naked. Nearly all of them carry burdens 
upon their heads. See those men who are bringing in the 
coffee bags from the wagons. 

Each bag weighs as much as a man, but they trot along 
as though they were carrying feathers. They are in their 
bare feet, and we hear the thud, thud, thud, of their foot- 
steps as they run to the steamer. Each man is paid a 
cent and a half per bag, and he is therefore anxious to 
carry as many bags as he can. 

Now we have left the wharves and have entered the 
great coffee-exporting section of the city. There is coffee 
everywhere. The streets are walled with warehouses in 
which we see coffee piled up by the thousands of bags, 
and we can hardly get along the sidewalk for the men 
who are unloading the wagons. There are scores of half- 
naked men carrying the bags from the carts to the ware- 
houses, and dozens of negro women down on their knees 
sweeping the stray coffee beans out of the cobblestones 
of the street that they may wash and sell them again. 
This building at our right is a coff'ee factory, and that hum 
is the noise of the machines which are cleaning the beans 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 



273 



for the market. Next door is the office of one of the 
American exporting houses, which does nothing but ship 
coffee to New York, and farther on are the commission 
houses which buy coffee to sell to shippers. 

Stop and listen to those knots of men on the street 
corners. They talk nothing but coffee. The very air 
smells of coffee, and we realize that we are in one of the 
great coffee ports of the world. 




"They talk nothing but coffee." 

We have already learned that the coffee crop is the 
most important crop of Brazil. The people make more 
money here in coffee than in anything else, and almost 
half of the coffee raised is sent to Rio de Janeiro to be 
shipped. Here also are the stores through which the 
coffee planters are supplied with goods, so that through 



274 BRAZIL. 

coffee Rio de Janeiro has to a large extent become what 
it is. 

After spending some time in the coffee section we take 
carriages for our hotel. Rio de Janeiro is too large a city 
to see in a day. It covers all together about nine square 
miles, extending from the harbor back to the hills. The 
streets go up hill and down. They cross one another at 
all sorts of angles, and we are unable to keep the points 
of the compass as we are whirled this way and that in 
going to the hotel. 



XXXV. MORE ABOUT RIO. 

WE shall take an interpreter with us this morning. 
The Spanish which we have learned in the South 
American capitals will be of little value in Rio de Janeiro, 
for the people here use Portuguese. Rio is the largest 
Portuguese-speaking city of the world. It has more people 
than all the cities of Portugal combined, and the country 
governed from it has a far greater population than the 
Portuguese-speaking population of the rest of the world. 

We first drive rapidly over the city to get a general 
idea of its various features. It is far different from the 
other cities which we have visited. The streets are nar- 
rower, and the houses are taller and of a different shape. 
In some streets they are of three and four stories, and in 
the business sections we find that thousands of people live 
above the stores, having no yards, and taking their airing 
on the balconies which extend along the houses from story 
to story. 

In the residence parts of the city the windows facing the 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 275 

Street are usually open, and out of nearly every window 
women and girls lean and stare at us as we go along. It 
seems to us that all the women of the city are at the win- 
dows, and our guide tells us that this is the chief occu- 
pation of the feminine part of the population. The 
better-class women seldom go out except to church. 
Their customs are much the same as those of the women 
of the Spanish- American cities. 

The guide tells us that Brazilian girls do not associate 
with the young men, and that the girls of Rio are backward 
and bashful. We ask, if this is so, how it comes that they 
beckon, by crooking their fingers, to friends in the street 
cars which are passing, and that now and then they make 
motions to people over the way. He replies that these 
motions are mere salutations, — they mean " Good day " 
or '* Good-by," — and that the girls are only saluting their 
girl friends on the opposite side of the street or those who 
ride by in the cars. 

We visit the business parts of the city. The stores are 
fine, and there are well-dressed men everywhere. Rio has 
many rich people, and the streets are thronged with buyers 
and sellers. Here we are in the Rua do Ouvidor (roo'a 
do ooVe-dor). This is the chief business street of Rio de 
Janeiro. It might be called the Broadway of the BraziHan 
metropolis. 

What a queer street it is! It is not wider than one of 
our alleys, but it is walled with bright-colored three- and 
four-story buildings, which seem to lean toward each 
other as though to shut out the sun. From the first 
stories flagpoles extend out over the street so that they 
almost meet in the center, and between the poles are 
arches of iron gaspipes connecting the buildings and 
forming a canopy, as it were, over the Ouvidor. 



276 



BRAZIL. 



Moving along under this canopy of poles and pipes is 
one of the strangest crowds of the world. There are 
people of all nations about us. We see the faces of Ital- 
ians, Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Brazilians, and Eng- 
lish. There are natty politicians dressed in black with tall 

hats, and there are merchants 
in business suits. There are 
Italian vegetable peddlers with 
baskets fastened to poles on their 
shoulders, 'and half-naked negro 
porters moving along with loads 
on their heads. There are bare- 
headed women and smartly 
dressed boys moving to and fro, 
forming all together such a hu- 
man mixture as you will see no- 
where else on earth. 

Some of the people are shop- 
ping. Others have come to sell, 
and many to gossip and chat with 
their friends. The Ouvidor is 
Rio's great promenade, and many men meet their friends 
here instead of asking them to come to their houses. 

Now we have left the Ouvidor and are passing through 
the side streets. What a lot of peddlers there are! 
Nearly all the hucksters of Rio carry their vegetables, 
fruits, and fish from house to house on their shoulders or 
upon their heads, instead of in carts or on donkeys. Here 
comes a man selling fish. He has his stock in two baskets 
fastened to the ends of a pole which rests on his shoul- 
ders. Behind him trots a man loaded down with long 
strings of onions. He has stopped at that house over 
there and is selling a string to the cook. The stems of 




Rio Peddlers. 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 



277 



the onions are so braided together with straw that they can 
be sold by the foot or yard. You may see stalls in the 
markets where only onions are sold. 

But what is that squawking and crowing we hear in the 
next block? It comes from the wicker crate which that 
old negro woman is carrying on the top of her head. It 
contains three geese and four chickens. She is a chicken 
peddler, and she thus carries live fowls through the streets. 

But here is another queer character. I mean that man 
on the opposite side of the street, who is clapping two sticks 
together. See the door opens 
and a woman asks him to enter. 
That man is a cloth peddler, his 
sticks are a part of his yard 
measure, and that clapping is 
the sign of his trade. Many of 
the women do not like to go to 
the stores, preferring to buy 
their goods of peddlers like 
him. 

And so we go on meeting 
one odd character after an- 
other, now accosted by boys 
selling papers, and now by 
peddlers with candies and fruit. 
The strangest sights of all are 
the porters who carry huge loads on their heads. There 
goes one with a box on his crown which must weigh two 
hundred pounds. Behind him is a group of eight negroes 
who are moving along w^ith a huge crate above them. 
Look closely and you will see inside the crate. It con- 
tains a piano, and they are carrying it on their heads from 
one part of the town to another. 




Onion Stall in the Market. 



278 



BRAZIL. 



But let us leave the business streets and visit the parks. 
We shall find them everywhere in and about the city, 
and shall know them by the royal palm trees which rise 
high above the rest of the vegetation and with quivering 
branches seem to wave us an invitation to enter. We are 
in the tropics, and the plants which we raise in our hot- 
houses are to be 
found here grow- 
ing wild. 

We take a street 
car and ride for 
seven miles along 
the bay and by 
the residences of 
rich Brazilians to 
the BotanicalGar- 
den. This has 
plants and trees 
from all parts of 
Brazil. It has 
some of the most 
wonderful palm 
trees of the world. 
As we enter the 
gate we come 
into an avenue 




"An avenue of royal palms." 



of royal palms, each of which is as tall as an eight-story 
house, although it is not more than a yard in diameter at 
the ground. There are more than a hundred of these 
magnificent trees lining the sides of the avenue. They 
rise in symmetrical shafts of silver gray, without a branch, 
for almost one hundred feet, and then shoot out into a 
canopy of fernhke green leaves. The avenue is not wider 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 



279 



than an alley, and we seem to be walking between two 
files of giant soldiers, the plumes on their hats quivering 
in the breeze above us and almost shutting out the blue 
of the sky. 

Crossing this avenue at right angles through the mid- 
dle of the garden is another avenue of these same palm 
trees, and running from it here and there are gravel walks 
shaded by curious trees. We wander through groves of 





"We wander through groves of feathery bamboos." 

feathery bamboos, stalks of green cane fifty feet long, 
whose leaves interlock, forming a dense shade from the 
tropical sun. The bamboo groves are the favorite parts 
of the garden for picnics, and we see family parties sit- 
ting in them sipping their coffee. 

We find here strange trees from all parts of the world. 
Here is a cinnamon tree, which grows perhaps best in the 
island of Ceylon. It has pale-yellow flowers, but its chief 



28o 



BRAZIL. 



value Is from the bark, which we use to flavor our pickles, 
and from which also comes cinnamon oil. That tree 
farther on is a clove tree. It is an evergreen, about 
twenty feet high, producing one of the spices of commerce. 
Then there are camphor trees and cork trees, and so many 
varieties of palms that we cannot describe them. There 
are all sorts of flowers, shrubs, and bushes. There are 



i^P^MBiiiiil 


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"We go over ravines." 



orchids of every variety, and great trees covered with 
blossoms. There are coffee plants of all sizes, and many 
tea shrubs, such as you see on the hillsides of China and' 
Japan. 

We might spend a long time in the Botanical Garden, 
but the hour for closing soon comes, and we take the cars 
again for our hotel. Later on we make tours over the 
little railroads which run from Rio de Janeiro up into the 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 281 

mountains. There are a number of such roads. Their 
tracks are just like those which take you to the top of 
Mount Washington and up to Pikes Peak. 

Each track consists of two rails, with a ladderlike rail in 
the center. Upon this central rail moves a cogwheel at- 
tached to the engine, whose other wheels rest on the track. 
The engine is behind instead of in front of the train, and 
it puffs and puffs, as it pushes us up the mountains through 
wonders of tropical scenery. We go over ravines hundreds 
of feet deep, and about mountain walls more than a thou- 
sand feet high. Now we seem to cling to the sides of the 
rock, and again great w^alls of rock hang over us, and we 
tremble as we think they might fall. 

The air here is moist, and at times we are riding through 
clouds. As we go higher we have magnificent views of 
the city and harbor, and on the top of the Corcovado we 
stand upon a rocky peak, amid some of the grandest views 
of the world. 

I The great city of Rio and its beautiful harbor is just 
below us, but so far down that the houses look no bigger 
than dog kennels as they lie there skirting the water. 
The sea beyond has become a bed of sapphire under the 
rays of the sun, and upon it are rocky islands of curious 
shapes, while all about it rise mountain on mountain and 
hill upon hill. 

See those four huge ocean steamers which are sailing in 
single file by the sugar loaf out to the sea. They look 
like canoes at this distance, but they are great ships loaded 
with coffee for Europe, New York, and New Zealand. 
The last one will pass down through the Strait of Magel- 
lan, and will go almost half around the world before it 
reaches its haven. 

There are other fine views on our way to Petropolis, a 



282 



BRAZIL. 



beautiful city of twenty-five thousand people, in the tops 
of the mountains just back of Rio. The region about it 
is so picturesque that it has been called the Switzerland of 
Brazil, and we shall find here the summer homes of many 
well-to-do Brazilians. 

It is here that our minister to Brazil and the other for- 
eign diplomats live. The city of Rio is often unhealthful. 




Petropolis. 



It has at times an epidemic of yellow fever, which is so 
bad for foreigners that of those who take it almost all die. 
The air of the seacoast is hot and stuffy. We find it 
more bracing as the httle cog engine pushes us on up 
the hills, and when we land in PetropoHs we seem to be in 
a different world. We spend some days in wandering 



about through the mountains enjoying the scenery, 
then go back to Rio and take ship for the north. 



and 



BAHIA. 



283 



XXXVL BAHIA AND THE DIAMOND MINES. 

WE are in Bahia to-day. We have sailed tliree days 
north from Rio de Janeiro on our slow coasting 
steamer, and have come to anchor in the great Bay of San 
Salvador, under the bluffs on which most of the city is 
built. These bluffs rise almost straight up from the water, 
having only a narrow strip of land between them and the 
sea. 

Upon this strip are the great wholesale importing and 
exporting houses, and upon the bluff are tall, bright-col- 
ored buildings, with feathery palms rising above them, 
quivering in the breeze. The bluff is so abrupt that ele- 
vators have been built to carry the people from one part 
of the town to the other, for it is very difficult to climb the 




Bahia. 



CARP, S. AM. — 18 



284 



BRAZIL. 



steep roadway which goes up the side of the hills. In the 
past sedan chairs were used, and those who could afford 
it were thus carried up on the shoulders of men. 

As we look at Bahia from our ship it seems very large. 
It is the second city in size in Brazil, and one of great com- 
mercial importance. It is the capital of the second largest 




Street Scene. 



state of the country, and exports quantities of tobacco, 
cotton, and hides. It is a cultured city, and is noted for 
its hospitals and schools. 

The Bay of San Salvador is about as large as that of 
Rio de Janeiro. There are more than a score of ocean 
steamers, numerous coasting ships, and a hundred small 
boats at anchor within it. There are many lighters or 
barges which are used to carry the goods between the 



BAHIA. 



285 



steamers and the shore. AH the craft have swung with 
the tide, and their noses are turned toward the city, so that 
we can easily imagine them a great naval fleet on its way 
to capture Bahia. 

Bahia has had its share of invasions. It is one of the 
most interesting towns of South America historically, and 
is one of the oldest cities of Brazil. It had fifteen thousand 
people more than half a century before Boston was founded, 
and for two hundred years thereafter it was the capital of 
Brazil. It continued to be the chief city until coffee be- 
gan to be raised in great quantities farther south, when 
Rio de Janeiro surpassed it. 

The country about Bahia is so rich and the harbor so 
good that for many years some of the other nations of 
Europe coveted it. The Dutch 
took it several times and held 
it for years, and at one time it 
was besieged by the English. 

It was for many years one of 
the chief centers for the slave 
trade of Brazil. It was one of 
the ports nearest Africa, and the 
negroes could be kidnaped and 
carried across the Atlantic into 
this bay. So many slaves w^ere 
brought that in the year 1800 
more than half the people of 
Brazil were slaves. A great 
many of the slaves who were 
brought to North America 
came to Bahia first, and indeed 
the slave trade went on secretly long after the rest of the 
world thought it was stopped. 




Policeman. 



286 



BRAZIL. 



This was not a long time ago, and as we land upon the 
wharves we notice that there are far more negroes than 
whites in the lower part of the city. Negro women sit 
upon the streets, with piles of fruit about them ; negro 

men are loading and un- 
loading the steamers, 
carrying huge bags and 
bundles on their heads ; 
and in the narrow side 
streets Httle black babies, 
as naked as when they 
were born, are crawling 
over the cobblestones. 
There is a boy of eight 
who is playing horse. 
He has a httle stick be- 
tween his legs, and he is 
going on the gallop, al- 
though he has not a 
stitch on him. 

How fat the women 
are ! The negresses of 
Bahia are noted for their 
enormous size. Many 
of them weigh more than two hundred pounds, and their 
flesh fairly shakes as they carry themselves over the street. 
Each woman wears a turban of white or some gay color, 
and her dress is much like a long white nightgown with a 
deep lace edging at the shoulders, through the meshes of 
which you can see her black skin. This lace is a matter 
of pride with these women. Each makes her own lace, 
and the gowns of many are beautifully worked. 

Some have gold bracelets on their arms and gold chains 




Each woman wears a turban. 



BAHIA. 



287 



about their necks, and we learn that many negroes have 
grown rich since they became free. 

We find, as we continue our travels in Brazil, that the 
black man has here as many rights as the white man. 
Many of the white people have intermarried with the 
negroes, and there are milHons of mulattoes in Brazil. 
The races are so intermingled that it is hard to tell who 
are pure whites or pure blacks. 







Placer Mining. 

Some of the negroes are very intelligent. During a 
visit to Brazil I found that the editor of one of the 
chief daily newspapers of Rio de Janeiro was a negro, and 
I was introduced to the archbishop of the province of 
Amazonas, whose face was as black as that of any African 
negro. There are colored men and women at almost 
every hotel table, and in the dining room of the steamers 
there are as many colored people at the table as whites. 



288 



BRAZIL. 



We spend some time in Bahia v^isiting its cotton and 
tobacco factories. We see cartloads of hides and bales 
of goatskins brought in from the country. They are to 
be shipped to America to be made into shoes. We are 
told that the state of Bahia is rich agriculturally, and also 
that it has some of the best minerals of Brazil. 

We are not accustomed to think of Brazil as a land of 
minerals. It has, however, gold, silver, iron, or coal in 




The mining is done in a rude way. 



nearly every one of its states. Vast quantities of gold 
have been taken from Minas-Geraes (me'nas-zha-ra'es), a 
state south of Bahia^ and the placer mines of Bahia yield 
large golden nuggets. The mining is done in a rude way, 
the men digging the gravel up with hoes, and washing it 
out in the streams in bowls much like those we use to 
make bread. 

The state of Bahia has the best diamond mines of 



BAHIA. 



289 



Brazil. It had for many years the richest diamond fields 
of the world, and it was noted for its precious stones until 
1867, when the diamond fields of South Africa were dis- 
covered. Since then the best diamonds have come from 
Africa, although thousands of dollars' worth are still annu- 
ally mined in Brazil. 

The best diamond mines are far back of the city of 
Bahia, in the mountains at the head waters of the river 
Paraguacu. We go to them on 
boats and on mules ; we can 
make but few miles a day, and 
it takes a long time. 

The diamonds are found in 
the gravel which lies upon a bed 
of clay at the bottom of the river. 
The stream is quite deep, and 
the mining is usually done in 
the shallower places where there 
are not more than twenty feet of 
water, and where, owing to a 
bend in the river, the current is 
not strong. 

A long pole is first driven 
down into the bed of the stream. 
Then two miners in a dugout 
canoe row out to the pole. One man remains in the boat, 
and the other, who is naked, dives down to the bottom. 
The diver has a big bag with him, the mouth of which is 
held open by an iron hoop. He rests the hoop on the 
riverbed, and scrapes the gravel into the bag until he has 
filled it, when he climbs with it up the pole to the boat. 
The divers often remain under the water for more than a 
minute at a time. 




Negro Woman of Bahia. 



\ 



290 BRAZIL. 

The bag of gravel is taken in the boat to the shore and 
emptied out upon the bank some distance back from the 
water, and the men then row back to the pole for more. 
This work goes steadily on through the dry season, for as 
soon as the rains begin the river gets so high that it is too 
deep to mine. 

Then the men stop and wash over the gravel, looking 
carefully for diamonds and other valuable stones called 
carbons. Often many bushels of gravel must be handled 
before a diamond or a carbon is found. 

The work is often very disappointing, and it requires 
great care and patience, but sometimes one little stone 
gives the miners a great reward for a whole season's work. 
When the mines were at their best only about one dia- 
mond a week was discovered, but the stones were so valu- 
able that the few which were found brought for many 
years almost a million dollars a year. 

The most of the diamonds now being discovered are 
small. They are shipped from the mines to Bahia, and 
from there sent to Europe to be cut into shape for jewelry, 
or for use in cutting glass or polishing gems. 

The carbons are really impure or black diamonds. 
They are about as hard as a diamond, but are more porous. 
They are used for fine boring machines and for polishing 
very hard substances. They are found in all sizes, from 
little ones as small as a grain of sand to some which weigh 
hundreds of carats. A carat is a weight so small that it 
takes one hundred and fifty of them to make one ounce 
troy. It is the measure for diamonds and precious stones, 
and is therefore used for carbons. Not long ago carbons 
were selling for twenty dollars a carat, or so much that 
one large carbon which was recently found brought twenty 
thousand dollars. 



ALONG THE COAST. 29I 



XXXVII. ALONG THE COAST OF BRAZIL. 

OUR travels of the next few weeks, comprised in this 
chapter, are along the coast of Brazil. We have 
taken a little Brazilian steamer at Bahia for Para, at the 
mouth of the Amazon. The distance looks quite short on 
the map, but it is more than two thousand miles, and as 
we move slowly along from city to city, stopping a day 
at each principal port to load and unload, it takes several 
weeks. 

We first visit Maceo, the capital of the state of Algoas. 
This state lies between the San Francisco river and the 
state of Pernambuco. It is about as large as West Vir- 
ginia, and is as thickly settled as Maine. The majority of 
its people are colored, and many of them are engaged in 
raising tobacco and cotton. 

Maceo has about twenty-five thousand people. It is a 
city of one-story houses, built close to the streets and 
painted in the brightest of colors. Its houses are roofed 
with red tiles, and some are moss-grown with age. At 
the windows we see girls and women leaning out, just 
as we did in Rio de Janeiro, and, save that there are more 
negroes, the people look much the same. 

Our next stop is at Pernambuco. This city is almost as 
large as Bahia. It is the capital of the state of Pernam- 
buco, which produces vast quantities of sugar and cotton 
and the finest of goatskins and hides. 

The proper name of the city is not Pernambuco, as it 
is often called, but Recife. The word '' Recife " means 
reef, and this is the city of the reef. We see the reason 
for the name as we enter the harbor, which is formed by 
a great tongue of rock which here extends two or three 



292 



BRAZIL. 



miles out into the sea, making a tank or harbor not half 
a mile wide, but so deep that ocean steamers can come in 
and anchor. The rock extends out like a wall, and as we 
look at it we can hardly imagine that it was not all built 




The rock extends out like a wall." 



by man. It does not rise very high above the level of 
the ocean, but so high that a low wall upon it suffices to 
prevent the waves from coming into the bay. 

As we go in there is a heavy wind from the east, and 
the waves seem to gnash their teeth as they throw them- 
selves against this stone wall, sending up masses of snow- 
white foam in their anger. Our ship has been rolling 
about on the ocean. Inside the harbor we lie perfectly 
quiet, and there is hardly a ripple, notwithstanding the 
billows outside. It is the first port at which the European 
steamers stop after leaving Lisbon, and more than one 
thousand ships call here every year, 



ALONG THE COAST. 



293 



We are now near a stone wharf, back of which are many 
great buildings filled with goods ready for shipment. A 
short distance above us are steamers taking on bales of 
cotton, and beside us is one unloading a cargo of dried 
beef from Montevideo. 

We land, and, taking the street cars, are carried over one 
bridge after another. We go by horses loaded with cot- 
ton, carts pulled by oxen in shafts, and on into the city. 
Pernambuco has many canals, and its bridges remind us 
of Venice. It has many fine buildings. It has some 




The villages are of thatched huts. 



Stores and houses whose walls are faced with porcelain 
tiles imported from Europe. Its people pride themselves 
on their business ability, and it has indeed a great trade. 
At Parahyba, still farther north, w^e have a chance to 
take a railroad ride into the interior during the waiting of 
the steamer. The train takes us for miles through groves 
of cocoanut palms. The vegetation is dense, and we see 



294 BRAZIL. 

Strange birds and strange animals in the trees. The par- 
rots screech at us, and Httle monkeys, or marmosets, mon- 
keys so small that you could put them into your pockets, 
scamper about through the branches. 

The villages are of thatched huts with walls of mud or 
palm leaves. They have no glass windows, and the doors 
are of woven palm leaves, so light that they can be lifted 
away during the day. Naked children play about the 
streets, and half-naked black, brown, yellow, and white 
men and women stare at us as we go through. 




Cotton Cart. 

Most of the country is wild, and such farming as we see 
is done with the ax and the hoe. The ax is used to 
cut down the trees or bushes, after which the field is 
burned over, and the crops sown without plowing. In 
raising corn the grains are dropped upon the ground and 
covered. The soil is so rich that they quickly sprout, and 
after this it is necessary only to hoe down the weeds to 
produce a crop. Cotton is cultivated in much the same way. 
There is plenty of rain here, and everything grows well. 



ALONG THE COAST. 



295 



Farther back from the coast are the highlands of Brazil, 
and a little farther north, in the state of Ceara (sa-a-ra'), 
at the port of which we next stop, the country is almost 
all high. It is a rolling country with mountain chains run- 
ning through it, a part of the Brazilian highlands which is 
often subject to droughts. 

When there is plenty of rain the crops are rich and 
everything is green and fresh, but during a long dry spell 
the land becomes as bare as the Desert of Sahara. Such 
times do not often occur, but when they do many of the 
people starve, and in the drought of 1877 and 1878 more 
than half of the whole population died of famine. 

The port of Ceara often bears the name of Ceara on the 
map. Its Brazilian name is Fortaleza. It has one of the 
worst landing places on the east coast of South America. 
There is no pier, and we 
are carried from our boat 
to the shore in the arms 
of half-naked men, who 
charge us each eight cents 
a trip. The waves are 
rolling in on the beach as 
we walk through them 
suspended only a few 
inches above the water, 
and we tremble at what 
might happen if our bear- 
ers should slip on a stone. 

The town of Fortaleza 
has about fifty thousand 
people. It is a beautiful " ^^'^ '^°"'"' ^ ^^^^^ peddler." 

city, with bright-colored houses, clean streets, and well- 
dressed people. We visit the market to learn what is raised 




296 



BRAZIL. 



in the country. We then take donkeys and ride through 
the city, and have time for a jaunt in the suburbs. 

The street scenes are interesting, and every turn brings 
a new picture. We pass everywhere men and women 
carrying all sorts of things on their heads. There is a 




Street Scene. 

barefooted negress walking briskly along with a pumpkin 
balanced on the top of her head, and behind comes a boy 
carrying a two-bushel bag of flour in the same way. See, 
he has stopped there at that fence, and without lowering 
or touching his burden has lifted up his leg to the first 
board, and is industriously searching for something that is 
biting him. 

Here comes a water peddler. He is driving a donkey, 
to the sides of which are slung four five-gallon, casks. 
Behind him is a man with two horses, each of which carries 
a load of wood. The wood is fastened to the sides of the 



ALONG THE COAST. 



297 



horses by wooden hooks made of forked Hmbs tied on hke 
a pack saddle. 

Do you see that cow over there with the milkman be- 
side her, on his knees, squeezing the milk into a bucket? 
The calf stands behind ; it is tied to its mother's tail with a 
rope. The calf has a muzzle upon it to keep it from feed- 
ing, and it thus goes along, tantalized by smelhng and see- 




In the Country. 

ing the food w^iich it cannot get at. That man is a milk 
peddler. He drives the cow from house to house and 
milks her to order. You would think that this w^ould pre- 
vent his watering the milk. It does as a rule, but some 
milkmen, it is said, have water bags concealed in their 
shirts, with a pipe running down the sleeve to their hands, 
so that they can squeeze water in along with the milk. 

Now we have left the city and are out in the country. 
We ride by banana fields, orange trees, and palm groves. 



298 



BRAZIL. 



There is one palm tree which grows wild in this region 
which produces more things, perhaps, than any other tree 
in the world. This is the carnauba palm. Its trunk is 
used for rafters and building material, and from its roots 
is made a medicine like sarsaparilla. The small trees are 
used as vegetables, and from them wine and vinegar are 

made, as well as a starch like sago, 
and a kind of sugar. Its fruit is a 
good food for cattle, the pulp hav- 
ing an agreeable taste, and the nut 
is sometimes used as a substitute 
for cofifee. The pith of this tree is 
as light as cork, and of the wood 
of the stem musical instruments 
are sometimes made. 

When tapped the tree gives forth 
a white liquid much like the milk 
of a cocoanut, and of the strawlike 
bark, which grows on its trunk, 
hats, brooms, and baskets are made. 
The straw is also used for thatch- 
ing houses. From the leaves a 
wax is obtained which is manufactured into candles, and 
which is extensively used in the states of northern Brazil. 
Ceara produces as much as two million pounds of this wax 
in a year. 

Another thing for which Ceara is noted is its parrots. 
They are said to be among the best talking birds of the 
world. They are of a beautiful green-and-blue color, with 
a bit of red on the wings and neck, but are smaller than 
most other parrots. We are met in the markets by men 
carrying parrots, and they follow us down to our boat and 
beseech us to buy. We find we can get good ones for 




Parrot Peddler. 



VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. 299 

about two dollars apiece, but alas ! they speak Portuguese, 
and before we can enjoy them they will have to be taught 
a new language. We take a number with us on the 
steamer, however, and amuse ourselves during the rest of 
our journey in giving the parrots lessons in elocution. 

The weather grows warmer as we move farther north, 
stopping at one port after another. We sail along for 
almost a day only a little south of the equator, and anchor 
at last at the city of Para, in one of the mouths of the 
Amazon. 



XXXVIII. THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZON, 
OR THE KING OF RIVERS. 

BEFORE we begin our travels up the Amazon let us 
consider the wonderful region into which we are 
going. The Amazon is the king of rivers, and it flows 
through the greatest river valley of the world. It is 
indeed more like an inclined plane than a valley. Its 
width is about as great as the distance from New York to 
Salt Lake City. The hills slope down to it gradually on 
the north and south. 

At its back are the great Andes, and from the foot of 
these it slopes downward toward the sea so gradually that 
in this long distance of about two thousand miles, or 
greater than the distance from New York to Denver, the 
fall is only two hundred feet. This is so little that, if the 
Amazon valley were free from trees and you and I were 
riding over it in a wagon, it would appear to be a level 
plain. The fall is only a little more than an inch to a mile. 

The fall is so gentle that you would hardly think the 

CARP. S. AM. — 19 



300 



BRAZIL. 



water would flow at all ; but it does flow, and it goes in 
such a mighty volume that it carries with it vast quanti- 
ties of the earth washings of the mountains. It would 
take miUions of horses, working day and night, to haul 
down the mud which it is carrying into the Atlantic. 

There is so much of this mud that for a day before we 
got to Para we were saihng through yellow water. In- 



■ 




^^^^^^^^^^^^H^__— ;:=' ' 7 





A Home on the Amazon. 

deed, it is said that the waters of the ocean are stained by 
the mud five hundred miles from the mouth, and bits of 
tree trunks and vegetation from the Andes have been seen 
floating four hundred miles out in the ocean, having trav- 
eled almost as far from their homes in the mountains as the 
distance across our continent. 

Is not this a wonderful river? How does it happen that 
it comes to be just where it is? What can be the cause 



VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. 3OI 

of such a great volume of water, which can thus keep on 
flowing day and night, year in and year out, from one Hfe- 
time to another? 

Let us see first how the Amazon valley was formed. 
Many geologists believe that there was here a great sea 
or strait joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. South 
America then consisted of two great divisions. On the 
north were the highlands of Guiana, Venezuela, and Co- 
lombia, and on the south were the highlands of Brazil and 
the remainder of South America, and between them the 
waters. Then there was a great upheaval of the earth at 
the westward. The Andes were thrown up out of the 
depths, and the basin of the strait was so raised that the 
waters flowed down into the Atlantic, and the Amazon 
valley was formed. 

So the salt waters were taken away. Now let us see 
whence this perpetual flow of fresh water comes. It 
is brought here by the trade winds, which fill them- 
selves full of water as they cross the Atlantic. They are 
loaded when they reach the coast of Brazil, and they 
sweep up the wide trough of the Amazon valley, drop- 
ping their rain as they rise and cool in their journey to 
the mountains. They drop more and more as they go to 
the westward, and the water falling over this vast surface 
is carried by countless streams into the trough known as 
the Amazon river. So much water falls that the Amazon 
valley is perhaps the rainiest region of the world. There 
is so much rain, indeed, that if the mouth of the river 
could be dammed up by a great dike a vast sea would 
soon be formed. 

It is estimated that so much rain falls that if it did not 
flow off, and remained where it fell, the vast valley would 
be so covered with water in a single year that the tallest 



302 



BRAZIL. 



man could drown anywhere in it. The average rainfall is 
seventy-two inches per annum, and where we are now 
enough rain falls every year to cover the ground with 
water to the depth of a fifteen -story house. 




Exploring the Amazon. 

As we stand on the deck of the steamer we notice that 
the air is full of moisture. Para has a heavy rain almost 
every afternoon, and its people make their appointments to 
call after the daily shower. We shall find the air moist 
all the way up to the Andes, and we must take out our 
knives, cameras, and guns every day or so and clean them. 
The air is so wet that anything steel will rust in your 
pockets, and a gun loaded overnight will be so damp that 
it will not go off in the morning. We must not be sur- 



VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. 303 

prised to find little moldy spots on our black shoes when 
we get up, and such of us as are carrying photographic 
materials had better seal them up in tins, for the dampness 
will spoil them. 

We are, fortunately, on the Amazon when the water is 
low. The great river for almost two thousand miles from 
the sea is now only from two to five miles in width. Dur- 
ing the rainy seasons of November and February it rises 
and slowly climbs up to from thirty to fifty feet above its 
present level. At such times it floods much of this low 
valley, and thousands of square miles are for months cov- 
ered with water. The river then flows in and out among 
the tops of the trees, and the valley for a thousand miles 
back from the Atlantic is a great inland sea from fifteen to 
one hundred miles wide. In the dry times you may see 
vast stretches of meadows which are made by such floods, 
where the water lies for months upon the land, so long that 
the trees will not grow upon it. The result is the pasture 
fields of the Amazon, which at times of flood are vast lakes. 

The most of the valley, however, is a forest, in which 
there are no paths, and through which we can go only 
upon the streams in canoes or boats. There are so many 
streams, however, that the most of the forest can be 
reached by water. The Amazon in its long course receives 
more than one hundred rivers, into which flow a myriad 
of brooks. Of its rivers eight are said each to have a 
navigable length of more than one thousand miles. Up 
these rivers you can go on the north until you are very 
close to the head waters of the Orinoco — so close that you 
could carry your boat and go down in it to the Atlantic 
Ocean. On the south you could sail up the Tapajos so 
far that, with a very short trip, you could drag your canoe 
into the tributaries of the Paraguay and Parana. 



304 



BRAZIL. 



The Amazon system is unquestionably the greatest 
upon the globe, and the river itself will surprise us more 
as we travel upon it. We shall go in a big ocean steamer 
to Manaos (ma-na'6s), on the Rio Negro, and we may 





^S' '-iii^' kiyHHHHI 


1 


^nHBRj^^n H^Hnlp 





An Amazon Alligator. 



there take smaller steamers which will carry us on the 
Amazon to Iquitos, Peru, more than twenty-three hundred 
miles from the Atlantic. 

If the Hudson river, which empties into the Atlantic at 
New York, were a great stream flowing through our con- 
tinent from the west, so that we could enter it and sail 
clear across the land to Salt Lake City on a steamer, we 
should have about the same condition of transportation as 
prevails on the Amazon. We might indeed almost cross 
the continent by water, for the Pacific is not very many 
miles from Iquitos. We could hire mules there and thus 
make our way over the Andes to the coast. 



PARA. 



305 



XXXIX. PARA, THE METROPOLIS OF THE 
AMAZON. 

BEFORE we start on our tour up the Amazon we 
must explore the city of Para. It Hes in front of us, 
back of the masts of those saihng vessels and steamers 
Hning the shore. There is a row of tall palms between it 
and the river. They rise high above that line of white 
and bright-colored houses, and their quivering branches 
are swaying in the wind from the sea. 

The city seems small, but the land is so low that we can 
see but little of it from the steamer. It runs far back from 
the water. It is as large as Indianapolis, and has a vast 
trade with all parts of the Amazon valley. The ships 
among which we are moving have come from far up the 
river. There is a side-wheel steamer which has a load of 
manioc and cacao from the Madeira. It has brought it 
more than a thousand miles to Para. That ship beside it, 
with the canvas over its deck, under which are numerous 
hammocks in which people are lying, is about to start up 
the Tocantins river, and that boat filled with rubber has 
been floated down from the wilds of Bohvia. 

See that steamer over there with the English flag flying 
from its mast. It is loaded for Liverpool. The great 
vessel beside it, with the dense smoke pouring from its 
funnel, is a Portuguese ship starting out for Lisbon, and 
farther over you may see a big cargo steamer just in from 
"New York. It has brought down kerosene, hardware, 
pine lumber, and codfish to be sold in Para, and it will carry 
back great boxes of rubber to be used in our factories. 

What a busy stream it is through which we move as we 



3o6 



BRAZIL. 



go to the wharf! We pass hundreds of sailboats filled 
with vegetables and fruit, and countless dugouts being 
paddled swiftly along toward the shore. Now we are at 
the landing, and the cargadores begin to load and unload 
the steamer. They work in their bare feet, carrying the 




Wharves at Para. 

goods in and out of the ship on their heads. Their faces 
are of all shades of white, brown, and black. Among 
them are negroes from Jamaica, and Spaniards, Portu- 
guese, and mulattoes from all parts of Brazil. 

We push our way through them and walk on into the 
business sections of Para. The buildings are of three or 
four stories. They are built close to the sidewalks along 
narrow streets, and their walls are of all colors, some 
being faced with blue, yellow, and green porcelain tiles. 

How big the shops are! They have large stocks of 



PARA. 



307 



goods, some piled upon the pavements outside the store- 
rooms. That block over there is chiefly filled with dry- 
goods estabhshments. See the bright-colored caHcoes 
and white cottons which hang on the walls outside the 
shops, and among them the numerous hammocks. The 
hammocks are of all grades and all prices. Some are a 




How big the shops are !' 



lacework of fine threads, and others are mere strips of can- 
vas. Hammocks are the beds of the Amazon valley, and 
we m^ust buy some before we go up the river. 

We shall need them to sit in by day, and in many 
places they will serve us as our beds at night. There 
are places on the boats in which hammocks can be swung, 
and in our camps in the woods the branches of the trees 



3o8 



BRAZIL. 



will serve for support. We are now in the tropics, and 
shall find hammocks much cooler than beds. They are 
also much safer, for the bugs, ants, and snakes cannot 
crawl into them so easily as they could into a bed. 

We take the street cars and ride through one business 
block after another, realizing as we do so the immense 
trade of Para. We go by beautiful parks, filled with 
palms and other tropical trees, and on into streets well 
shaded, past the homes of the rich Paranese. The houses 




Along the River, Para. 



here are fine. The windows are filled with women and 
girls looking out. Some sit and lean on the sills, and 
others, beautifully dressed in silk gowns, hold in their arms 
naked babies. Soon we reach the edge of the city and 
come to the dense forest out of which Para has been cut. 



PARA. 



309 



We walk a few blocks, and return to the wharf through 
a different section of the city. We stop at that part of the 
river where fruits, vegetables, and merchandise are brought 
from the neighboring islands in small boats. The scene 
here is a bright one. There are scores of gayly dressed 
negro women peddling all sorts of things. There are 
women and men trotting along with great burdens on 
their heads, and people of all classes buying and selling 
fish, fruit, and vegetables, and some queer merchandise. 




Banana Market. 

See that great pile of baskets which has just been 
brought in from the boats. They look like round peach 
baskets and are lined and covered with green palm leaves. 
A crowd has gathered about them, and the people are 
buying them and carrying them off on their heads. What 
can they be? Let us open a basket and see. We lift up 



310 



BRAZIL. 



the palm leaves and find that it is filled with coarse meal ; 
it is white, and it looks much like ground popcorn. We 
taste it. It makes us think of sawdust. It is manioc 

flour, an article which forms 
the food of the people of 
a great part of Brazil. It 
is very nutritious. Indeed, 
we consume great quantities 
of manioc ourselves, for it is 
from it that the tapioca which we 
use in soups and puddings is made. 
From the wharves we go to the 
markets. The fruits remind us of 
Ecuador, and show us that we are 
again in the lands of the equator. 
We buy deHcious pineapples and 
cocoanuts for a few cents apiece, 
and the bananas and oranges 
are so ripe that they almost 
melt in our mouths. There 
are quantities of black tobacco 
in long twists, some as big 
around as a baseball bat; and 
peddlers bring us parrots and monkeys and ask us to buy. 
In the market we see many vultures. They sit on the 
roofs about the court, ready to swoop down and eat up the 
scraps of meat thrown away by the butchers. Vultures 
are the scavengers of the Amazon, and are never killed 
by the people. They are quite tame, and if they were 
not so disgusting we might easily catch them and pet 
them. 

But what is that on the head of the man who is going 
out of the door of the market house? It is as big around 




"We see many vultures. 



PARA. 311 

as a washtub and about a foot thick. See, it is alive! It 
is a turtle which is lying upon its back; it is poking its 
head in and out of its shell as the man carries it off. That 
is one of the big turtles of the Amazon. They are found 
near Para, and exist in large quantities in most parts of the 



-i^|r 




"is 
See it is alive!' 



Amazon basin. They have their breeding places, where 
they go in countless numbers at certain times of the year. 
They dig holes in the sand and lay their eggs there. The 
eggs are about as big as hens' eggs, and have a leathery 
skin instead of a shell. Each turtle lays about one hun- 
dred and twenty eggs, and millions upon millions are 
deposited in these laying places. 

The people learn where they are. They go to them in 
crowds and dig up the eggs, and use them to make turtle 
oil or turtle butter. The yolks of the eggs contain much 
oil. The egg hunters fill their canoes with the eggs and 
then pound them to a jelly with sticks, or tread them into 



312 



BRAZIL. 



a mush with their 
feet. After this some 
water is poured into 
the mixture, and it is 
allowed to stand in 
the sun. In a short 
time the oil rises to 
the surface. It is 
skimmed off and fur- 
ther purified by being 
boiled in copper ket- 
tles. It is used large- 
ly for burning and 
sometimes for cook- 
ing. 

While hunting the 
eggs many little tur- 
tles are caught. These 
are esteemed great delicacies. They are sold by dozens 
in strings. We see many in the markets, and find that 
they are delicious when roasted. 




Street in Para. 



XL. IN THE LAND OF RUBBER. 



OUR travels during the next few days shall be devoted 
to the rubber industry of the Amazon valley. Para 
is the chief rubber port of the world, and in its warehouses 
we can see how rubber is packed for the markets. There 
are many rubber trees in the forests which grow on the 
islands near the mouth of the Amazon. These islands we 



RUBBER. 313 

can reach by a steam launch, and we have arranged to 
visit a rubber plantation. 

But first let me tell you a little about this wonderful 
product. Rubber has now become one of the most im- 
portant materials used by man. A century ago it was not 
known as being of value except for rubbing out pencil 
marks. Now it is used in many kinds of machinery. It 
keeps us dry in wet weather, and in the cities even the 
horses have rubber coats. We ride over the streets on 
rubber tires. We wade through the wet in rubber boots, 
and race horses are shod with rubber shoes. During one 
year the pubhc school children of New York used more 
than five tons of rubber ink erasers, and rubber bands are 
consumed by the million in our large business cities. There 
are indeed so many uses for rubber that we cannot enu- 
merate them ; so many that rubber grows more and more 
costly every year, and the business of gathering it in- 
creases. 

The best rubber, and indeed the most of the good rub- 
ber, comes from the Amazon valley. It is made from the 
sap of the Siphonia elastica, a forest tree which grows wild 
in this region. It is found scattered over a district as 
large as all the United States east of the Mississippi river, 
extending from the mouth of the Amazon westward to 
the wilds of Peru, and on the south running far down into 
BoHvia and Matto Grosso, Brazil. 

The rubber tree flourishes best in land which is flooded 
during part of the year. Ground which is always above 
water, or which has not good drainage, will not do for it. 
The very best conditions for the growth of such trees exist 
south of the Amazon, and also upon the islands and low- 
lands not far from its mouth. 

The trees from which the rubber now comes are not 



314 BRAZIL. 

cultivated. They might be and probably will be raised on 
plantations when the wild trees are worn out and the de- 
mand for rubber increases. Each rubber tree bears many 
seeds. Its fruit is like a horse-chestnut, three seeds being- 
found in each shell. When it is ripe the shell bursts with 
a noise like a firecracker and throws the nuts to some dis- 
tance. There are so many nuts on each tree that it is said 
a man could easily gather enough in a day to plant a hun- 
dred acres of land. The seeds after planting grow rapidly. 
They must have plenty of moisture and heat, but must be 
shaded from the direct rays of the sun. After a time they 
can be transplanted, and if set out in the right soil they 
will thrive without cultivation. 

It takes from fifteen to twenty years, however, before 
the trees will produce enough rubber sap to pay the pro- 
prietor, and this is so long that at present the people pre- 
fer to hunt for and tap the wild trees. There are thousands 
of men doing this in the different parts of the Amazon 
valley. In some places Indians are employed to gather 
the rubber, and there are rubber camps thousands of miles 
inland from where we now are. Indeed, some of the 
rubber which is shipped from Para has to travel as far in 
getting to that port as it does in going from Para to New 
York. 

Our steam launch leaves Para in the evening, and we 
spend all night upon the Amazon. How bright the stars 
are, and how the moon shines here in the soft air of the 
tropics! Our hammocks are slung from the roof of the 
boat, and the warm wind from the ocean fans us to sleep. 
We ride all night through one narrow channel after an- 
other, and when we awake we are at the house of a rub- 
ber planter. A little wharf made of wood extends from 
his front door out into the river, and as we step out of the 



RUBBER. 315 

boat we are within a few yards of the house. It is a low, 
one-story building, roofed with red tiles, with a wide 
veranda about it. At one end is a storeroom filled with 
the groceries and dry goods which the planter sells to 
his rubber gatherers, and on the veranda itself are piles 
of what look like smoked hams, but which are really lumps 
of rubber ready to be shipped to market. The planter 
gives us a breakfast of coffee and rolls, and later we walk 
with him through the dense forest, winding our way this 
way and that from one rubber tree to another. 

How interesting it is, and how different from what we 
imagined! We have heard of rubber groves and rubber 
forests. There is no such thing in nature. The trees are 
widely scattered. They are so far apart that each man 
has to walk several miles in gathering his sap for the day. 
Each man has his own trees to attend to, ranging from 
sixty to one hundred and fifty trees,* according to the dis- 
tance between them, and this number is called a path or 
road. The size of a rubber plantation is estimated by the 
number of paths or roads it contains. The roads are mere 
footpaths which lead through the forest from one rubber 
tree to another. 

We are winding our way along such a path now. Let 
us stop at one of the trees and look at it. It is different 
from the other trees about it, but it is not at all like the 
rubber trees or plants which we have in our hothouses. 
They are lean plants with enormous, thick leaves of smooth, 
polished green. 

That rubber tree there has a trunk as big around as 
your waist. It is a great forest tree, and its leaves are some- 
what like those of the Enghsh ash. Look up and see how 
smooth the bark is. It is of a whitish gray, and at a dis- 
tance of twelve feet above the ground it shines almost like 

CARP. S. AM.— 20 



3i6 



BRAZIL. 



silver. Farther down it is scarred, black, and warty, with 
streaks of yellow matter here and there in the bark, as 

if melted beeswax 
had been poured 
upon it. Take out 
your knife and dig 
up a bit of the wax, 
so you can catch 
hold of it. Now 
pull at it. You can 
stretch it from six 
inches to a foot from 
the tree before it 
comes off. That is 
coarse rubber, the 
remains of the sap 
which has dried on 
the tree. It will all 
be pulled out and 
saved, although it 
will be sold at a 
much lower price 
than the better vari- 
eties which we shall 
see made later on. 
But here comes, the rubber gatherer to tap the tree for 
the day. He has a little tomahawk, or hatchet, the blade 
of which is just about an inch wide, and a lot of tin cups 
of the size of an egg cup. With the hatchet he makes a 
gash in the bark, just deep enough to go through without 
cutting the wood. As he pulls back the hatchet a white 
f^uid begins to ooze out. It is just like milk, and makes 
us think of the juice of the milkweed. The fluid comes 




Tapping a Rubber Tree. 



RUBBER 



317 



out in great drops, and the man takes one of the little tin 
cups and fastens it into the tree just under the wound, so 
that the milk drops down into the cup. He now makes 
two or three other gashes in the tree, fitting each gash 
with its cup, and then goes on to the next. He continues 
his work until every tree in his path has been tapped. 





'^^^&^^^^^ 


|^^bS|^liHH| 




ffv'^^'^^^i 


w^p^MBB 


■^p^ J "^^T ffr^ 


l^J^S^^^^gS^'i Jt- iB^ 


^^^^-^^ff^^t ^^^. nm^^m' 




^^^HH 


^^^M ^ ^^^^F"~ ''■^"'■g> 




^c^^t ffil^l^^^l 


Pr^^^y 


s^isW^''^'^ 




fea^-.JH^^^ 




^^^ 


K^^^M' 



Collecting Rubber Sap. 



The proprietor shows us how slowly the sap runs. He 
tells us that only a few tablespoonfuls can be gathered 
from each wound in a day. The sap flows best in the 
morning, and it is along about noon that the rubber man 
comes back to empty the milk out into a gourd or bucket. 
The amount collected varies according to the richness of 
the trees, but if a man can gather two quarts of milk in 
one day from his path he thinks he has done very well. 



3i8 



BRAZIL. 



The next process is turning the milky sap into the 
rubber of commerce. This is very important. The sap 
coagulates, or becomes hard, upon exposure to the air, 
and if it is not properly treated it turns to coarse rub- 
ber and must be sold for low prices. The fine rubber is 
cured by smoking, and the best rubber comes from the 
sap which is smoked a few hours after it is gathered. 
Our planter makes very fine rubber, and his men are 

required to cure their 
rubber sap as soon 
as they return from 
the forest. 

There goes a man 
now with a bucket 
containing two quarts 
of sap which he has 
just brought from the 
trees. Let us follow 
him and see the pro- 
cess of curing. We 
go with him to an 
open shed, and watch 
him pour the sap 
into a great bowl as 
large as those we use 
ifi mixing bread. See 
how white the sap 
is! It looks just like 
milk. It tastes sweet, 



g^|^|M»tJ^. -^~ 


^ - ^=: 


'^^ 


w^^ 


^^^^^^g 




> 


1 


1 


H 


3@^^c^^^~*'^ 


^m 


1 


^1 


\^^^^ 


1 - _ , Ijifr"' 


/ 




i 




E 


1 






s^^^-r."'^ - 


H 


1 


1 


1 



Smoking the Sap. 



and is so thin that you could easily drink it. 

Now the man stoops down and builds a fire of palm 
nuts in one corner of the hut under a clay chimney raised 
a little from the floor. The chimney is so small that its 



RUBBER 



319 



top does not reach so high 



as our waists. See how the 
and watch that dense smoke which pours out 



nuts burn 

through the chimney. 

Notice the man. He has taken a long paddle and 
thrust the end of it into the milk. It comes out as white 
as snow. The milk has stuck to the paddle. The man 
now thrusts the end of the paddle into the smoke, twisting 
it rapidly about as he does so, so that no drop of the 
precious sap may fall into the fire. 




Rubber Gatherers. 

As the smoke touches it the rubber thickens and har- 
dens ; its white becomes streaked with brown by the smoke. 
It has soon coated the paddle like varnish. Now the man 
thrusts the paddle again into the milk bowl. When he 
brings it out there is a fresh coat of rubber sap on it ready 
for smoking. This is hardened in the same way, and the 
man so continues until he has built up about the end of 



320 BRAZIL. 

the paddle a mass of rubber as large as a six-pound 
ham. Now he takes a knife and makes a cut in one side. 
He pulls off the rubber and carries it to the house, where 
it is piled up with other lumps for shipment to Para, and 
thence to factories all over the world. 

After dinner the planter tells us that he will return to 
Para with us if we will allow him to tie his boat to our 
launch. We gladly consent, and our little steamboat 
takes not only the boat, but a big shipment of rubber. 
The rubber hams are carried by men down the wharf and 
piled up in the boat. There are hundreds of them, and 
the boatload represents a vast deal of money. 

Good rubber is worth so much that a lump as big as a 
baseball will sell for a dollar. The rubber has to be care- 
fully handled. When one of the hams falls on the wharf 
it bounces high up into the air and rolls about so that we 
laugh when we see the men trying to catch it again. 

At Para our load of rubber is put into carts and carried 
to one of the great warehouses for shipment. The buyers 
look each piece carefully over. They cut it in two to see 
that the rubber is pure all the way through. They weigh 
it and pack it up in great pine boxes, each of which holds 
between three and four hundred pounds. In such boxes 
it is shipped to the United States and to Europe. 



3^@<C 



XLI. A TRIP ON THE AMAZON. 

OUR next trip is to be up the Amazon. We shall 
travel several weeks on the river, but we might spend 
years and not see all of its wonders. Lying in our ham- 
mocks on the deck of the steamer, we float for miles out 



TRIP ON THE AMAZON. 32 1 

and in between walls of forest trees a hundred feet high. 
Now we are close to one bank of the river, and now we 
have crossed and are traveling near the dense vegetation 
of the opposite side. At times we go for miles in mid- 
stream, where the river is so wide that the forests make two 
faint lines of blue on the right and left. Now we are 
steaming out and in between islands so close to the land 
that we can see into the huts of the rubber gatherers and 
others who have made their rude homes on the banks of 
the river. 

We are passing one on the right. It is not more than 
fifteen feet square. It is a rude hut thatched with palm 
leaves, with holes in the walls for windows. There is a shed 
at one side, and in this there are two hammocks, in each of 
which a woman is lying. We see other huts farther on. 
Each hut has its boats tied to the shore. The owners rush 
to the banks and pull up the boats at the approach of the 
steamer. Sometimes they jump into them and row out 
from the land to prevent the waves made by the ship from 
overturning their boats or filling them with water. 

The most of the boats are dugouts, although at the 
larger houses there are rowboats, some of which are 
painted in bright colors. It is only by boats that the 
people can go from one place to another. There are no 
roads through the dense forests of the Amazon. Each 
hut has a little clearing about it, but there are few open 
spaces which are more than an acre in size, except farther 
up where the cacao trees have been planted, and in the 
pastures made by the floods of which we have already 
learned. 

We have often heard of the tropical forest. We find it 
interesting, but far different from what we supposed. It 
is not a great mass of palm trees. Most of it is made 



322 BRAZIL. 

Up of giant forest trees, not unlike some we have in the 
temperate zone, and as we steam up the river a mile or so 
from the shore, it looks just like our forests at home. As 
we get closer, however, we see here and there the broad 
leaves of the palms shining against the lighter green of 
other trees. 

There are hundreds of feathery creepers, air plants, 
which hang like strands of green silk down from the 
branches of these great forest giants. There is a dead 
limb clothed with orchids. Farther over a great round 
mass of blue flowers rises out of the green. That is a tree 
in blossom, and if you look to the right you may see other 
vast bunches of white, yellow, and purple, the flowers of 
other forest trees which grow only along the Amazon. 
There are trees here, as tall as the tallest trees of our for- 
ests, each of whose tops forms a bouquet of violet blue 
as big as a haystack. They rise, surrounded by green, a 
hundred feet above us. There are stacks of buttercups 
away up in the air, and we now and then see trees loaded 
with flowers much like tiger lilies, only they have a tinge 
of red mixed with their yellow and black, which makes 
them more beautiful. 

Close to the shore in many places the trees rise like a 
wall up from the water. Many of them are a hundred 
feet high, and the creepers and vines which crawl up their 
trunks and wind this way and that in a tangled mass are 
so thick that it is almost impossible to cut your way 
through them. The bark of most of the trees is of a 
whitish gray. Some of the trunks are so twisted and 
ribbed that they look like mighty cables of white taffy 
which have been braided together to support the vast 
mass of foliage above them. 

One of the noblest trees of all rises high above the 



TRIP ON THE AMAZON. 



323 



others. This is the tree which produces the Brazil nut. 
It grows to a height of one hundred and fifty feet, with 
magnificent foHage of large dark-green leaves. Its fruit 
is of the shape of our black walnut, save that it is larger 
around than the largest baseball. It has an outer skin like 
a walnut, with a similar hard shell within, and inside the 
hard shell are the long, three-cornered Brazil nuts which 
are sold in the stores. There are often twenty nuts in one 




On the Rio Negro. 



shell. The nuts are gathered and carried in boats to Para, 
where the shells are broken and the Brazil nuts of com- 
merce taken out. The nuts are quite heavy, and we trem- 
ble when we get o^ now and then at a landing and walk 
under the trees, for fear some may drop on our heads. We 
hear monkeys chattering in the branches, and fear that 
they may throw the nuts at us from the tops of the trees. 



324 BRAZIL. 

We see also the trees that produce the sapucai'a nut. 
This is almost as big as a football. It is of the shape of 
an urn with a nicely fitting lid. When it is ripe the Hd 
falls off and the nuts within drop out. 

The channel of the Amazon is very wide for a long dis- 
tance from its mouth. At the town of Obidos (o-be'dos), 
five hundred miles from the Atlantic, it narrows, and its 
immense volume pours through a channel about a mile 
wide. The current here is so strong that our steamer 
does not rely on its anchor alone, but has also a cable by 
which it is tied to a tree on the bank. We wait for some 
hours, and during the stay are taken in canoes to the 
shore. The town is a collection of rude houses built along 
three or four narrow streets. 

Obidos has a factory for making chocolate, and we learn 
that there are many cacao plantations near by. We see 
more cacao trees as we sail on our way up the river. 
The orchards line the south bank of the Amazon for miles. 

The cacao trees are about twenty feet high. They 
branch up in sprouts from the bottom. Some of them are 
loaded with what look like small melons or squashes. 
This is the cacao fruit, inside of which are the seeds which 
form the cacao bean of commerce. They are just hke the 
beans which we saw in Ecuador and Colombia, and the 
trees are just the same. The cacao of the Amazon is said 
to make excellent chocolate. About half a million dollars' 
worth of it is shipped from Para every year, and the prod- 
uct all told amounts to thousands of tons. 

We pass the mouth of the Madeira some distance above 
Obidos, and soon after this come to ^ place where the 
waters of the Amazon and the Rio Negro meet. Those 
of the Rio Negro are as black as ink, and those of the 
Amazon as yellow as mud. 



TRIP ON THE AMAZON. 



325 



The Rio Negro keeps its color for a long distanGer^after 
it reaches the Amazon before it is swallowed up by that 
great yellow monster. We ride along in our steamer on 
the line where the two colors join, seeing black on one 




Indians, Northern Brazil. 

side of the ship and yellow on the other, but soon turn to 
the right and sail for an hour up the wide Rio Negro, when 
we reach the city of Manaos, the metropolis of northern 
Brazil. 

Manaos lies on the river bank high above the water, its 
wide streets lined with palm trees, and its bright houses 
shining out under the tropical sun. It is a large city for 
this part of the world. It has about half as many people 
as Para, and, as the center of the interior trade of the 
Amazon valley, it must continue to grow. 

We are surprised to find good houses and modern im- 
provements here in the heart of the continent. Manaos 



326 



BRAZIL. 



has electric street cars, electric lights, and good schools. 
It has one of the finest theaters of Brazil, a great market, 
a museum, and some very large stores. To it come 
steamers from all parts of the Amazon valley, and the 
river is so deep to this point that the largest ocean steam- 
ers go from Manaos to New York and Europe. 

The rubber gatherers bring quantities of rubber to 
Manaos from the vast regions west and south of it, and 
they come by the hundreds here for their supplies, often 




Wharves, Manaos. 



trading rubber for goods. It is from here that expeditions 
start out to explore the unknown wilds of the Amazon 
and its tributaries, and we can find here boats and men 
who will go with us to almost any part of this unknown 



We could take a steamer and sail more than thirteen 



ON THE ORINOCO. 32? 

hundred miles farther west into Peru, and there find a 
trail which would bring us over the*Andes to the west 
coast, or we might go by another steamer down the 
Madeira, and by walking about its great falls reach the 
Beni and travel to a point from where we could easily get 
back to La Paz, Bolivia, or Lake Titicaca. 

We decide, however, to continue our journey up the 
Rio Negro. We ride for days through its black, muddy 
waters, winding in and out through the dense forests, until 
we come to the mouth of the Cassiquiari (ka-se-ke-a^re) 
river, a stream which unites the Orinoco with the Amazon 
system. We move northward on the Cassiquiari, and are 
soon floating down the Orinoco on our way to the At- 
lantic. 



XLIL ON THE ORINOCO AND THE 
LLANOS. 

IS not this a wonderful river system by which we can 
come from the Amazon into the Orinoco without 
traveling upon land? We have seen how close the head 
waters of the Paraguay river are to the southern tribu- 
taries of the Amazon. Indeed, with a short canal, we 
might start from the Atlantic into the mouth of the Ori- 
noco, and go on the water clear through interior South 
America, coming out again into the Atlantic through the 
Rio de la Plata. We saw something of this as we came 
up the Amazon, but if you will take your map you will see 
how easily it could be done. 

First trace your way from the Orinoco into the Cassi- 
quiari, then go over the route we have just come down to 



328 VENEZUELA. 

the mouth of the Tapajos, and sail up this to its source. 
You are now so nd^r the beginnings of the Parana system 
that in a day you could walk to some of them, and you 
would have then but to float with the current down the 
route up which we came in visiting Matto Grosso, Brazil. 

We are now on the Orinoco. Its thick yellow waters 
are loaded with sediment. They are rushing in a swift 
current down to the Atlantic. They have been gathered 
from the mountains far to the westward. They have been 
poured in through countless branches from the llanos, or 
vast meadows, and other parts of the basin, a territory 
one seventh as large as the whole United States. 

The Orinoco is indeed a wonderful river. It is the 
third largest river on the South American continent, 
being surpassed only by the Amazon and the La Plata. 
It is almost fifteen hundred miles long, and its main stream 
is navigable for twelve hundred miles. It has four hun- 
dred navigable branches, and it so drains this vast region 
that there are few places in its basin where you cannot 
reach navigable water by a mule ride of a few days. 

Now we have left our small boats and are again on a large 
steamer. We are traveling through a country far differ- 
ent from that of the Amazon. The dense forest has dis- 
appeared, and a vast expanse of plain stretches away on 
both sides of the river. The plains are covered with 
coarse grass, the most of which is now luxuriantly green. 
Here and there it is gray, and we sometimes pass a tract 
which has been blackened by fire. 

See that smoke away oflf to the right, and the flames 
rolling up from the ground. That is one of the prairie 
fires of the llanos of central Venezuela. It has been 
started by the farmers. They are burning off the dead 
grass that the green sprouts may more quickly come up. 



ON THE ORINOCO. 



329 



What a lot of cattle there are on the plains! We see 
herds of thousands, and we learn that cattle raising is one 
of the great industries of this country. More and more 
cattle are being raised every year, and Venezuela now 
has several million beeves feeding upon its great plains. 
The beasts are grown for their meat and their skins. The 




Indian Village. 

skins are salted and dried, and are shipped by the thou- 
sands to the United States and Europe, where they are 
tanned and made into shoes and other such things. 

The meat is stripped off in sheets from the bones ; it is 
salted and made into jerked beef, which is so much desired 
by the people of Spanish and Portuguese America. It is 
taken on the steamers down the Orinoco, and has a ready 
sale in the various islands of the West Indies. 



330 



VENEZUELA. 



But what Is that town we see away off on the right 
bank of the river? There are blue-and- white buildings 
with red roofs rising in terraces upon the low hills. There 
are steamers at anchor at the wharf, and the place seems 
quite a city. It is the first evidence of civilization we 
have seen since we left Manaos some weeks ago. That 
is the chief city of interior Venezuela, the metropolis of 




Group of Natives. 



the llanos. Its name is Ciudad Bolivar (se-u-dad' bo-le'- 
var). It has perhaps ten thousand people, and it forms 
the center of trade for a vast region. From it go the 
chief exports of cattle, and it is also the point from which 
expeditions start out for the gold mines farther south. 

Now we are in front of the town. We have landed and 
are walking up steep, narrow streets paved with rough 



ON THE ORINOCO. 



331 



cobbles. The houses are almost all of one story. They 
are built about courts, and they seem like those of the 
Spanish towns we saw in our tour along the west coast. 
There is plenty of grass in the streets, and we look about 
in vain for a carriage. There are no wheeled vehicles to 
speak of. We shall have to use horses in making our trips 
into the country. Every well-t^-do family on the llanos 







■'^^^'km^ ' 



"Things are carried about upon donkeys." 

has plenty of horses. The stock is especially fine. 
The horses are of Moorish breed. They have a gait like 
a pace, which carries you along so gently that you feel 
you might be riding on the rocking-horse used by your 
baby brother. 

There are few carts anywhere in Venezuela. Things are 
carried about upon donkeys. There comes one now with 

CARP. S. AM. — 21 



332 



VENEZUELA. 



two huge baskets filled with vegetables slung to his sides. 
Behind him is another carrying boxes of bread, and we 
see others loaded with all sorts of things, including wood, 
bricks, and stone, which they are patiently bearing to 
different parts of the city. 

We see many donkeys which have come in from the 
country when we visit the market. They have neither 




La Guaira. 



bridles nor halters, and they stand blinking their eyes, pa- 
tiently waiting for their masters to drive them back home. 
Some are hobbled by ropes tied about their front legs, 
and not a few are moving along by lifting their two front 
feet at one time, to get the vegetables and scraps which 
have dropped from the loads of other beasts going by. 
We find in the market many interesting things. There 



ON THE ORINOCO. 333 

are all sorts of vegetables and tropical fruits. There are 
quantities of plantains and bananas, which, we learn, form 
a large part of the food of the people. There is plenty of 
beef, and manioc flour such as we saw on the Amazon. 

There are red clay bowls sold for cooking, and many 
grass hammocks. Hammocks are used as beds by nine 
tenths of the people, and they form for almost all the loaf- 
ing and sitting places during the day. We frequently 
sleep in hammocks during our visits to the large farmers 
near Ciudad Bolivar. 

Even the wealthiest people have country houses built 
of poles and mud, which are rude in the extreme. They 
have large verandas about them, and in this warm region 
the veranda is the pleasantest part of the house. We 
spend hours upon it during the heat of the day, and it 
is there that we often come to sleep for the night, prefer- 
ring its cool air to the heat of our bedrooms. 

There are steamers every few days from Ciudad Boli- 
var down the Orinoco. They sail out through the delta, 
and go on to Trinidad, one of the West India Islands, 
from where you can get ships for La Guaira and other 
coast cities of Venezuela. 

It is upon one of these steamers that we sail down the 
river. Our boat is a great side-wheel steamer with two 
decks, much Hke the boats on the Hudson. It has an 
American captain, but the passengers, with the exception 
of ourselves, are all Venezuelans. Some of them are white, 
others are of the mixed race formed by the union of the 
Spaniards and Indians, and others seem to have negro 
blood in their veins. We have a few native Indians among 
the deck passengers, and there are a number of priests, 
dressed in the big hats and long gowns of their class. We 
have many women and children, who have with them such 



334 VENEZUELA. 

a lot of cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, and other birds, that 
the scene on the deck makes us think of a Httle zoological 
garden. 

We steam for two days before we come to the delta. 
The river is wide, and there are numerous islands. There 
are few villages and not many people. The water of the 
river is so thick that we seem almost to see it drop mud 
as it flows. From it has been built up the great delta 
through which we pass out on our way to the sea. 

The delta of the Orinoco is about as large as the State 
of New Jersey. It has flowing through it many deep 
channels, which are lined with a tropical jungle. There 
are mango trees and palms, bananas and wild forest trees, 
bound together with long creepers, or lianas, much like 
those we saw on the Amazon. 

We see Indian huts and clearings which have here and 
there been made in the jungle. The huts are made of 
poles and palm leaves, and the people within them lie in 
their hammocks or stand outside and gaze at us as the 
steamer goes by. The men and boys have only a rag 
about the waist, and the little children are naked. The 
women wear short petticoats made of the fibrous bark of 
the palm tree. All seem lazy and worthless, and we learn 
that they hunt and fish only enough to keep them alive. 



3>@4C 



XLIII. VENEZUELA AND ITS CAPITAL. 

SHORTLY after leaving the delta of the Orinoco we 
reach the island of Trinidad, where we stay but a few 
hours, and then take ship for the ports of Venezuela. We 
travel from one place to another, making excursions back 



CARACAS. 335 

into the country, visiting all the large cities, and spending 
some weeks in Caracas the capital. 

Venezuela is a very large country. We see that it has 
vast tracts of rich land, and realize that it is one of the 
best of the South American republics. Its territory is so 
large that if it could be transported to the United States 
it would cover all Colorado, Texas, Idaho, and California. 
It is greater in extent than Germany and France combined, 
and large parts of it have excellent soil. We have already 
seen the rich pastures of the south. 

There are few countries of the world which are so well 
watered. We know something of the Orinoco system. 
Venezuela has many other navigable rivers. It has, all 
told, more than one thousand streams. Upon its coast 
there are thirty-two harbors and numerous bays. The 
largest bay is Lake Maracaibo, the area of which is about 
the size of our Great Salt Lake. 

It was from Lake Maracaibo that Venezuela got its 
name. When the Spaniards discovered the country, about 
eight years after Columbus first came to America, they 
entered this bay. On some of its shores and islands they 
found a tribe of natives living in huts, made of palm leaves 
and rushes, built upon piles which they had driven down 
into the sand. Their huts were surrounded on all sides 
by water, and they went from one place to another in 
canoes. This reminded the Spaniards of Venice. So they 
called the country Venezuela, a word which means " Lit- 
tle Venice," and by this name it has gone ever since. 
There is a similar town on Maracaibo to-day. The Indians 
inhabiting it live by fishing. They are quite savage, and 
although they speak Spanish, they have not united with 
the whites, as have many other tribes of the country. 

Venezuela is also a land of mountains. Branches of the 



336 VENEZUELA. 

Andes extend out into it, and we find the capital situated 
a little back from the seacoast in a nest in the mountains. 
Many of the mountains contain deposits of gold and other 
valuable minerals. There are rich gold mines south of the 
Orinoco, and among them one which has produced more 
than a million dollars* worth of gold in a year. It is said 
to be the second richest gold mine of the world. 

The chief wealth, however, of Venezuela is in its soil. 
We have already seen the great pastures, the llanos of the 
Orinoco basin. There are in the north and northwest 
vast tracts of rich land, which produces great quantities 
of fine tobacco, cotton, and coffee. 

The coffee plantations are especially interesting. The 
climate here is warmer than in the coffee lands of southern 
Brazil, and we find that the trees are raised differently. 
The most of the fields are irrigated. The coffee trees are 
shaded to protect them from the sun. The young sprouts 
are set out among banana plants. The bananas shoot up 
quickly, and their wide green leaves ward off the rays of 
the sun from the tender coffee trees, and keep the soil 
moist. Later, bucuara trees are planted. These trees 
grow rapidly, and soon extend high above the coffee 
plants, sending out branches like those of the sycamore, 
and furnishing just the right shade. The coffee produced 
in Venezuela is of a very good quahty. It is much like 
mocha coffee, and much of it is sold as mocha in our 
market. 

Along the coast of Venezuela we see many cacao 
orchards, and learn that they produce very fine chocolate. 
The trees are carefully cultivated, the orchards being laid 
out much the same as our peach orchards, save that the 
trees are protected from the sun in the same way as the 
coffee trees are. The orchards are also irrigated. The 



CARACAS. 



337. 



weeds are kept down, and the fruit is more carefully cared 
for than that of the orchards we saw on the Amazon. 
The result is that the trees produce large quantities of 
fruit, six or seven hundred pounds of chocolate seeds be- 
ing grown in a year on one acre. Many orchards produce 
two crops a year. 

After the seeds are taken out of the pulp and dried 
they are carried to the seaports and thence shipped to the 




Banana Plantatic 



markets. The most of the product goes to Spain, France, 
and Germany, but some is sent to the United States. The 
cacao seeds are bought by the fanega, a measure holding 
about a bushel and a half. As much as twenty million 
pounds have been exported in one year, and for this the 
people have received about two million dollars. 



338 VENEZUELA. 

Caracas is one of the most interesting of the South 
American capitals. It is the chief city of Venezuela, and 
although its population is less than one hundred thousand, 
it is about three times as large as any other town in Vene- 
zuela. 

Caracas is situated in a little basin on the southern slope 
of the mountains, only six miles in a straight line back 




Statue of Washington. 

from the coast. Still, it is more than half a mile high up 
in the air, and in traveling to it on the railroad we have 
to go more than twenty-two miles. 

We ride through banana fields and palm groves, then 
climb the mountains, now turning this way, now that. 
Now we go over bridges with gorges below us which are 
many hundred feet deep, and now we shoot through tun- 



CARACAS. 



339 



nels, to come out again on the side of the mountain, with 
the vast expanse of the Caribbean Sea spread out under 
our eyes. 

The air grows cooler. The yellow-fever-laden, tropi- 
cal atmosphere of the coast has disappeared, and when at 
last we land in Caracas we are in one of the most health- 
ful climates of the w^orld. 




"We see pretty Spanish women looking out." 

The city lies in a beautiful valley, about two miles w4de 
and fifteen miles long, surrounded by mountains, some of 
which are two miles in height. The valley is covered with 
sugar plantations, vegetable gardens, coffee groves, and 
orchards of oranges, lemons, and other fruit. 

We are surprised at the city. The streets are narrow, 
but the sidewalks are made of Portland cement, and the 



340 



VENEZUELA. 



bright buildings facing them are of all colors of the rain- 
bow. They are nearly all of one story and have ridge 
roofs of red tile. Many of them have windows facing the 
street, heavily barred, and through the bars we see pretty 
Spanish women looking out. 

The streets cross one another at right angles, with a 
number of plazas or parks. In one of the parks there is 

a bronze statue of 
George Washing- 
ton, and in another 
a statue of Simon 
Bolivar, the hero of 
Venezuela, and in 
fact of all South 
America. He was 
the Washington of 
this part of the 
world. He organ- 
ized a movement 
which resulted in 
the independence of 
Venezuela, New 
Granada or Colom- 
bia, and Peru, and 
he was the founder 
of Bolivia. 

Later on we visit 
the Caracas Univer- 
sity. We spend some time in the Federal Palace, and also 
in the Houses of Congress, where we learn that the coun- 
try is governed in much the same way as our own. 

At night ^e go about the streets under the rays of 
electric lights. We ride from one part of the city to an- 




Statue of Bolivar. 



CARACAS. 



341 



Other on street railways, and notice that Caracas has many 
of the modern improvements. Many of the young Vene- 
zuelans we meet speak English and French, and we see 
that the better classes of the people live as comfortably 
as we do at home. Some of them have large one-story 
houses composed of many rooms encircling courts, or 
patios, in which grow great rose trees, curious varieties of 
palms, and all sorts of tropical plants. 




\i •iLf^^h;.^»y-'^. 



In a Garden. 

The Venezuelans are very hospitable. They pride 
themselves upon being one of the most enterprising peo- 
ples of the South American continent, and think their 
country is destined to be the greatest among those of the 
southern half of our hemisphere. 

They are more interested in the United States than the 
other South Americans. A large part of their trade is 



342 THE GUIANAS. 

with us, and there are fast steamships which start every 
few days from La Guaira to New York. The journey 
takes not much more than a week, and as we stand on the 
wharf and look at the ships flying the American flag we 
feel inclined to jump on board and go home. 

There is, however, another country left to visit. We 
have the Guianaa yet to explore. So we take one of the 
little steamers which is going east along the coast, and, by 
changing again at the island of Trinidad, get a ship bound 
for Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana. 



XLIV. IN THE GUIANAS. 

THE Guianas are different from the other countries of 
South America in that they are colonies belonging 
to nations of Europe. British Guiana belongs to Great 
Britain, Dutch Guiana is a dependency of Holland, and 
French Guiana is the property of France. All of these 
countries have governors appointed by the rulers of the 
countries to which they belong. None of them have large 
populations, and as a whole they are of little importance 
in the commerce and trade of the South American conti- 
nent. 

Still, when South America was discovered this region 
was thought to be one of the richest of all. It was a part 
of a country described by the explorers as full of gold, silver, 
and precious stones. One adventurer who skirted the Gui- 
anas and entered the Orinoco told about a city called El 
Dorado, which had been built in the midst of a great white 
lake, whose smallest house surpassed in grandeur the 



BRITISH GUIANA. 



343 



palaces of the Incas and Aztecs. ** In this city," said the 
explorer, " the vessels used in the kitchens are of gold and 
silver, studded with diamonds. The houses have statues 
of solid gold as big as giants, and there are figures of 
beasts, birds, fish, and trees, all of gold. The pleasure 
gardens of the islands are filled with figures of gold and 
silver, and the king of the country and his court wear 
clothes of such a nature that they seem to be sprinkled 
with gold and silver from sandal to crown." 




The descriptions of this wonderful city excited all Eu- 
rope, and expeditions were formed to explore this part 
of the world. Great numbers of young men left Europe 
for this purpose, expecting to make fortunes, and in look- 
ing for the fabulous city they explored the greater part of 
northern South America, penetrating to the sources of the 
Orinoco, entering the Amazon and the rivers which flow 
out into the Atlantic through the Guianas. 

It was from the expedition led or sent by Sir Walter 
Raleigh that Great Britain became possessed of British 
Guiana, and it is said that Sir Walter Raleigh presented to 
Queen Elizabeth some gold nuggets and rude images of 
solid gold as an evidence of the value of his discovery. 



344 - THE GUIANAS. 

Gold really exists along the Orinoco, the Essequibo, and 
in some of the streams of French and Dutch Guiana. It 
has not been discovered in the Guianas, however, in very 
large quantities, and the wonderful city of El Dorado, with 
its gold and diamond kitchen utensils, is yet to be found. 

The land of the Guianas is of a curious formation. It 
is a body of highlands, sloping down at its outer edges 
toward the basin of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon 
in such a way that if the country were dropped down a 
few hundred feet the water of the sea would rush in and 
the Guianas would be a large island. 

The exact extent of the territory is not known. French 
Guiana claims a part of Brazil, and British Guiana has for 
a long time contended that much of Venezuela should 
rightly belong to it. At the lowest estimate, however, 
each of the three countries is as large as the State of New 
York, and they all contain some excellent land. 

The climate of most parts is very unhealthful. It is 
exceedingly hot, and the highlands are covered with for- 
ests as dense as the wildest parts of the Amazon. Here 
and there are great grassy plains, upon which cattle might 
be fed, and upon the lowlands near the coast are many 
places which grow sugar, coffee, and cotton. 

But what kind of people are there in these countries? 
We shall see the civilized population of the coast cities. 
The majority of the inhabitants, however, live in the wilds. 
They are savage Indians and savage negroes, the descend- 
ants of runaway slaves. The Indians are of many tribes, 
and they have very strange customs. 

The Arawaks, according to report, have a game called 
the whip dance, in which the dancers stand in two rows 
opposite each other. Each one has a whip with a hard, 
strong lash made of fiber. With these they whip the 



BRITISH GUIANA. 345 

naked calves of each other's legs, often thrashing each 
other until their legs are covered with blood. The dance 
is looked upon as a test of endurance and bravery, and the 
man who can stand the most whipping is considered the 
best. The game goes on, it is said, with perfect good 
temper, and at its close the dancers go off in a band and 
drink one another's health. 

The people of another tribe of Indians wear nothing but 
a strip of cloth about their waists. They are, however, 
fond of jewelry, and pierce their lower lips in such a way 
that two pins can be worn in them. They also have pins 
in their nostrils, and deck their necks and arms with such 
beads and coins as they can pick up. 

The Indians are of many tribes. Some of them paint 
their bodies, wear bits of bone in their lips, and cause their 
calves to swell by means of garters tightly clasped below 
the knee. 

There are other strange Indians who are said to have 
light complexions, with blue eyes and light beards, and 
rumor gives it that there is a fairy race in these regions 
which all other Indians dread. Most of these reports come 
from hearsay, and some of them, like the story of the gold 
city of El Dorado, may not be true. We have not the 
time required to make such explorations ourselves, and so 
shall leave the exact nature of the Indians in doubt, say- 
ing we suppose that they may be as reported, but we 
really do not know. 

There is no doubt, however, about there being many 
black people in the Guianas. We shall see civilized negroes 
everywhere. Slaves were imported for generations to 
work on the sugar plantations, and to get the fine woods 
out of the forests and put them on the ships for Europe. 
After slavery was abolished many of the negroes settled 



346 



THE GUIANAS. 



on the coast lands where they had been toiHng. We see 
their thatched huts everywhere. They are now farmers. 
Other negroes went off to the woods and formed tribes 
of bush negroes, intermarrying with the Indians. The 
bush negroes have a language which is a mixture of Dutch, 
French, and English, combined with Indian and African 
words. Some of the wild negroes are very brave, many 
being strong and fine-looking. 



S^w 


m 


4 ■ 


''% 


^^ 


Zm 


~~ 


-i 


ii 


s 


s ll^^^^l 


''-mmm^^'^^^''^^^^ 


.". kS 


^^^mn 


— ■'" '^ " J^ 


Ik^^HH 


(^^^^^^IS?!^ 




|n^ 


'^^ 


m^" 


1 






1 i^ 


Hywj^ 


11 

■■ --11 


^-- i 


=5 


i 




IJ 




_ : ■■ i! 






^-^^^m 


■mmmmmmtm 


■SF^s^siJ^^^^ 



We see their thatched huts everywhere." 



But here we are at the wharf of Georgetown. We have 
sailed up a little river, the banks of which are lined with 
tropical vegetation, with sugar estates cut out of the jun- 
gle. We see many cocoanut palms, clumps of bamboos, 
and great trees covered with flowers. 

What a queer crowd is that on the wharf! We rub our 



BRITISH GUIANA, 



347 



eyes and wonder if we are not in Asia rather than in South 
America. There are scores of almond-eyed Chinese with 
their hair hanging in long tails down their backs. There 
are black Hindoos in turbans and strange garments, and 
there are Parsees wearing long black coats and hats like 
inverted coal scuttles. There are numerous Portuguese, 
and English merchants who have come to the steamer. 
The most of the Hindoos and Chinese were imported to 
work on the sugar plantations, and we find them scattered 
everywhere throughout the coast countries. 




"There are black Hindoos in turbans and strange garments. 



How queer Georgetown looks after our long stay in the 
Spanish and Portuguese cities of other parts of the conti- 
nent! It is more Hke a city of Holland than Spain. The 
roofs are slanting, and the walls of most of the houses are 
of wood or galvanized iron. Many of the houses are tall, 



348 THE GUIANAS. 

built with gable ends facing the street. Near every house 
is a great iron tank. This is to catch the rain water which 
is used for drinking, for it is better than that which comes 
from the springs near the city. 

Georgetown has about fifty thousand inhabitants and 
it has some large buildings. The city lies on low land, 
and the large buildings stand upon wooden piles which 
have been driven down into the mud to form the founda- 
tionSi In many of the streets run canals, which serve 
to drain the water out into the river in times of flood. 

The city has many modern improvements. We enjoy 
visiting the stores, for the merchants speak English, 
and we take the tramway and ride out to the suburbs, 
where the houses, stand by themselves in beautiful gardens 
filled with tropical plants. 

The sugar plantations are interesting. Many of them 
are large, employing hundreds of laborers and making 
thousands of tons of sugar each season. Each has its 
manager and overseers, and its books are kept as carefully 
as those of our great business establishments. 

The land of the Guiana coast is so rich that the sugar 
cane can be cut several times a year, and it is said that it 
will grow up for sixty years in succession without being 
replanted. The soil is composed of earth washings brought 
down by the rivers from the mountains, soil so rich that 
it will grow everything produced in the tropics. Great 
quantities of dirt are brought during the floods, which are 
so great that dikes have to be erected to keep the land 
from washing into the sea. The building of these dikes 
is very expensive, and so the sugar plantations are nearly 
all owned by men and companies having large capital. 

We find more sugar plantations near Paramaribo, the 
capital of Dutch Guiana, which we reach in a little Dutch 



DUTCH GUIANA. 



349 



ship from Georgetown. Paramaribo lies about twenty 

miles up the Surinam river. It has about thirty thousand 

inhabitants, and in its 

architecture and the 

waterways and houses 

it is not unlike the cities 

of Holland 

Many of the people 
speak Dutch, a lan- 
guage which sounds 
very queer to us when 
it comes from the ne- 
groes we see every- 
where. There are also 
many whites and mu- 
lattoes. There are also 
black-skinned Javanese 
who have come to work 
in the sugar plantations. 
The better classes are 
dressed in light clothes, 
the women wearing stiff 
skirts, loose jackets, 
and head-dresses not 
unlike turbans. The poorer people go barefooted, and 
many of the children wear no clothing whatever. 

From Paramaribo we steam to Cayenne, the capital of 
French Guiana. The city is smaller than either George- 
town or Paramaribo. It contains about twelve thousand 
inhabitants, but it looks quite large from the ship, with a 
grove of palm trees behind it and a high church steeple 
rising above the rest of the houses. 

It is built upon an island about thirty miles in circum- 

CARP. S. AM. — 22 




Cayenne Creole. 



350 



THE GUIANAS. 



ference, a narrow strait separating it from the mainland. 
We find the town interesting. The most of its houses 
are of two stories, some of them being covered with plas- 
ter which is painted all colors of the rainbow. 

The land is not much different from that of the other 
Guianas, and the people are much the same. We see, 




In Cayenne. 

however, many hard faces among them. French Guiana 
has for years been a penal colony, to which thieves and 
other criminals have been exported from France. 

Its climate is not healthful, and it is indeed not a place 
where any traveler would care to stay long. We are glad 
when the steamer arrives on which we can go back to 
Trinidad Island, and thence, having finished our long tour 
of the South American continent, take ship for New York. 



INDEX. 



Aconcagua, Mount, 73, 82, 122. 

Alpacas, 76. 

Amazon, 299-327. 

Andes, mines of, 95-100. 

Andes, in Colombia, 19, 32 ; Ecuador, 

44-46, 50; Peru, 67-80; Chile, 

119-122. 
Ant cities, 228. 
Argentina, 167-200. 
Armadillo, 199. 
Asuncion, 219-225- 

Bahia, 283-290. 

Balboa, Vasco Nunez, discovery of 

Pacific Ocean, 17. 
Bananas, 24, 258. 
Beef, dried, 208, 329. 
Beef extract factories, Uruguay, 208. 
Bodegas, 42, 43. 
Bogota, 35-37- 
Bolivar, Simon, 340. 
Bolivia, 87-100. 
Borax, loi. 
Brazil, 243-327. 
Brazil nut, 323. 
Buenos Aires, 192-200. 

Cabot, Sebastian, 211. 

Cacao, or chocolate, 32-34, 324, 336. 

Canal, Panama, 18, 20. 

Cape Pilar, 157. 

Caracas, 338-341. 

Carbons, 290. 

Cauca, river and valley, 32-34. 

Cayenne, 349. 

Ceara, Brazil, 295. 

Chile, 100-167. 

Chocolate. See Cacao. 

Chuno, how made, 81. 

Cinchona, 92. 



Cinnamon trees, 279. 

Ciudad Bolivar, 330-333. 

Coal mines of Chile, 144-I48. 

Coca, 93. 

Cocoanuts, how grown, 23, 26. 

Coffee, 252, 257-267, 271-274,-3^36. 

Colombia, 16—38. 

Colon, Isthmus of Panama, 20-22. 

Commerce on Lake Titicaca, 84, 85. 

Concepcion, 144. 

Cordova, 185. 

Cuyaba, Brazil, 247. 

Cuzco, 77. 

Desaguadero, river of, 83. 

Desert, Great South American, 50-54, 

110. 
Diamonds, 288-290. 

Earth building in the Parana, 213. 



Ecuador, 38- 
El Dorado, 



Farming, in Argentina, 182-190 ; Bra- 
zil, 294 ; Chile, 130 ; Paraguay, 226 ; 
Peru, 53-55. 

Gauchos, the cowboys of the pampas, 

179. 
Georgetown, 347. 

Germans in southern Brazil, 251, 252. 
Gold mining, 95, 96, 163, 248. 
Guanacos, 169. 
Guano, 106. 
Guayaquil, 38-42. 
Guayas river, 38, 42. 
Guianas, 342-350. 
Gulf Stream, 14. 



Honda, Colombia, 35. 
Horses in Argentina, 



[79. 



351 



352 



INDEX. 



Iguana lizard, 27. 

Incas, the, 77, 78. 

Indians, Alacalufes, 154-156; Arau- 
canians, 137-144; Ecuador, 49; 
Guiana, 344; Peruvian, 69; Qui- 
chua and Aymara, 78-80 ; Onas, 
165 ; Paraguay, 237 ; Yaghans, 167 ; 
Venezuela, 334, 335. 

Ipecac, 248. 

Iquique, 102. 

Llamas, 75, 76. 
Llanos, 328, 329. 
La Paz, 87-92. 
Lima, 58-66. 
Locusts, 188, 189. 

Magdalena river, 35. 
Magellan, Strait of, 149, 1 51-167. 
Manaos, 325-327. 
Manioc, how raised, 225. 
Mate, or Paraguay tea, 234. 
Matto Grosso, Brazil, 242, 249. 
Montevideo, 203-208. 
Mountain sickness, 71. 

Negroes, in Brazil, 285-287; in the 

Guianas, 345, 346. 
Nitrate of soda, 101-105. 

Obidos, 324. 

Oranges in Paraguay, 231. 
Orinoco river, 327-334. 
Oroya Railroad, 67. 
Ostriches, 170. 

Palms, ivory, 25; cocoanut, 26; 

royal, 278 ; carnauba, 298. 
Pampas, 1 09- 174. 
Panama, 28. 

Panama, Isthmus of, 16-29. 
Panama Canal, 18, 20. 
Panama Railroad, 24. 
Para, 305-312. 
Paraguay, 217-249. 
Paraguay river, 216, 233-248. 
Paramaribo, 349. 
Parana river, 212-216. 
Parrots, 298. 
Passport, II, 12. 
Patagonia, 167. 
Peccary, 240. 



Pernambuco, 291. 

Peru, 50-86. 

Petropolis, 282. 

Pizarro, 58. 

Plateau of Peru, 72-80. 

Poopo, Lake, 83. 

Potatoes, 81. 

Punta Arenas, 159-162. 

Quinine, 92. 
Quinua, 74. 
Quito, 47. 

Railroads, Brazil, 254, 267, 281 ; Peru, 

67; Transandine, 11 5-1 22, 169. 
Recife, 291. 

Rio de Janeiro, 267-280. 
Rio de la Plata, 208. 
Rio Negro, Brazil, 325. 
Rosario, 191. 

Rotos, or Chilean workmen, 135. 
Rubber, 312-320. 

San Salvador, 15. 

Santiago, 123-130. 

Santos, 252, 253. 

Sao Paulo, 255. 

Sheep freezing, 176. 

Sheep raising, 164, 174. 

Silver, 97, 108. 

Smythes Channel, 151. 

Spaniards in South America, 57, 58, 

77- 
Stock raising in Argentina, 177. 
Sugar cane, 54, 183, 348. 

Tapir, 241. 

Tierra del Fuego, 162-167. 

Tin, 99. 

Titicaca, Lake, 81-86. 

Turtles, 311, 312. 

Uruguay, 201-208. 

Valparaiso, 109, 112. 
Venezuela, 327-342. 
Vicufia, 76. 
Vineyards, 184. 
Vultures, 310. 

Wheat in Argentina, 187-192. 
Wool, 197. See also Sheep. 



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